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Shipyard as Classroom: General Dynamics NASSCO Sends Welders to School

Book learning has its place, but no matter what you do, there is no substitute for on-the-job training.

General Dynamics NASSCO believes that firmly.

Welders are the backbone of NASSCO’S workforce. The largest shipyard in Barrio Logan builds its products from the ground up, turning steel plates into vessels longer than two football fields.

The welder’s craft holds these 50,000-ton ships together, and NASSCO insists on training its welders in-house. Even if a prospective employee has experience, they go through NASSCO’s welding school, said Mike Jury, a training and development specialist at the shipyard.

“Bring ’em in right to work? We couldn’t do it,” said Anthony Paolino, the shipyard’s manager of communications and strategic outreach.

Employees must learn practices that meet military welding standards, Jury said.

NASSCO’s course takes eight weeks. If a student has welding experience from high school or vocational school, that person might finish in four to six, Jury said.

There is a little bit of classroom instruction, perhaps 10-20%. The rest, Jury said, is lab. Welding students occupy any of 80 cubbyholes, scattered here and there around the yard, in the shadow of whatever ship is taking shape.

Crawl-Walk-Run

NASSCO has run a welding school at the site for at least 35 years, current employees say.

At the moment it is training 18 students on the first shift and eight students on the second shift. A few are specialists in other areas who are cross-training.

Two groups of 10 students are scheduled to come in after them.

The yard could conceivably handle 60 students, representatives said.

Jury, who has worked at the yard for 25 years, showed a reporter the sort of training a student gets in flux-core arc welding, or FCAW.

Welders build skills through an approach described as crawl-walk-run.

First students do the basics, joining a 12-inch steel plate with a second plate. Students get initial lessons on working vertical surfaces, and surfaces above their heads.

Steel can be joined at various angles, in a variety of ways. Students must learn them. Students must get comfortable with materials such as mild steel, stainless steel, aluminum and an alloy called Inconel. Pipe welding is a different discipline, and pipes come in various materials.

No Cakewalk

Jury showed off an example of a watertight collar that has a welder describe a circle. Other advanced work takes place on large surfaces, and in confined spaces that force a welder’s body into awkward positions.

“We don’t make it easy for them,” Jury said, adding that the more difficult the training, the easier things will be in the shipyard.

The student-instructor ratio is kept at 5-to-1 or 6-to-1, Jury said, adding that a ratio like 20-to-1 would be ineffective.

Students are assigned mentors. They are continuously evaluated on hard and soft skills (such as whether they ask questions) and sometimes asked to do remedial work.

When it comes time to leave the school, welders are typically sent to a point on the assembly line called SOC 3 (short for Stage of Construction 3). It’s a place in the yard where workers take flat pieces of steel and assemble them into rudimentary three-dimensional shapes.

Students then advance through six levels of journeyman; each level comes with after-hours training.

The work gets harder because the production environment is not controlled like the school environment, shipyard representatives said.

In Search of the Natural Artist

Jury also showed off a small recycling area, where NASSCO employees tear apart student projects so they can use the steel again.

Is welding easy to learn?

Jury looked his questioner in the eye and paused. “It all depends,” he finally said.

Some students are “natural artists,” Jury said, noting the need for several skills including eye-hand coordination.

One of NASSCO’s current students is Brittany Bynum, a 33-year-old East County resident who is making a career change.

“It felt like the right thing,” Bynum said of her decision. “I really like to weld.”

Bynum said she has been interested in welding for a few years. She recently enrolled in a San Diego vocational school, and met NASSCO representatives through the school.

She previously worked as a preschool teacher in Escondido and Oceanside.

How does that compare to welding?

“Kids can be more challenging than welding,” she said.

But work with preschool children provided a valuable lesson for work at NASSCO, she observed. It taught her patience.

Much to Think About

There is so much to think about when welding, Bynum went on to say. There is timing, there is the size of the weld, there are the angles. Welding jobs are never the same. Paying attention to the work at hand is critical.

Bynum, who has a shock of bright red hair sticking out from under her hard hat, plans to become a pipe welder. “I’m excited,” she said.

One worker estimated the ratio of men to women at the NASSCO yard is 20-to-1, maybe 30-to-1.

One of General Dynamics NASSCO’s goals for 2020 is to increase the number of women, said Paolino.

The Defense Department has done an excellent job of promoting itself to women and bringing women into the military services, Paolino said, adding that NASSCO would like to follow its example.

While NASSCO’s welding school gets most media attention, the business trains workers in a variety of other trades. Other eight-week courses include pipefitting, painting, rigging and shipfitting. The latter is the process of joining massive subassemblies into a finished ship.

NASSCO takes its name from National Steel & Shipbuilding. David Carver took over as president in October.

The unit of General Dynamics (NYSE: GD) builds U.S. Navy auxiliary ships. It has started a new line of oiler ships for refueling at sea.

It also builds ships for domestic, commercial shipping companies such as Matson Inc.

NASSCO competes with other businesses on the San Diego waterfront for U.S. Navy ship repair projects. Some of the workforce next door at BAE Systems San Diego Ship Repair undoubtedly trained at NASSCO.

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