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Welding inspector certification in Canada versus the U.S.

Q: I know what you're thinking—another early Saturday morning question....

I've been looking at the requirements for obtaining a Canadian Welding Bureau (CWB) inspector certification. Am I seeing this correctly? A CWB inspector can apply for an AWS certified welding inspector (CWI) by reciprocity by doing nothing more than submitting application and fees. But a CWI who wants to be a CWB, in this case a Level 2, would fill out the application, pay fees, and still have to take an exam? Doesn't strike me as "equivalent" or fair.

A: Your assessment is correct, and by the way, life’s not fair. Those Canucks take their welding seriously. The requirement for a CWB to apply for a CWI is just a fee and some paperwork. For a CWI to apply for a CWB, it’s a test. In a nutshell, it is much harder to become a CWB than a CWI. (There, I said it.)

When I was the quality manager at a pole manufacturing company that was CWB certified, every six months I had to hire a CWB engineer to audit my organization (and it was an in-depth look at our welding). There were a lot of hoops to jump through, but if we wanted to sell powerline poles in Canada, it was a requirement. I was also a contract CWI for a boss who was Canadian. Anytime I mentioned my past work as a welding engineer, he went ballistic. “Calling yourself a welding engineer in Canada means you’ve met specific requirements in education and testing, and if you referred to yourself as a welding engineer without meeting those requirements, you could go to jail!” he’d tell me.

Life in a CWB Shop

Some of the things I liked about working in a CWB shop:

  1. Welders had to retake their welder qualification tests every two years. I believe that helped maintain weld quality in our shop.
  2. Welder qualifications were given using a bevel groove weld. The first pass was a fillet weld of a specific size up against that square edge of the bevel groove. The fillet had to have a restart in it. The location of the restart was marked, and one of the three required bend coupons had to contain that restart.

One of the things I didn’t like is they consider flux-cored arc welding (FCAW) and gas metal arc welding (GMAW) with a metal-cored wire (MCAW) as the same process for welder qualification purposes. The welding engineer in me (said quietly so as not to be heard across the U.S./Canadian border from my home in Minnesota) sees these processes as requiring different skills.

When a shop requires compliance to CWB and AWS, this FCAW/MCAW thing wreaks havoc. In fact, when I showed up for my first week at this pole shop, I learned that all of the welders took a FCAW test to get their job, but the shop ran about a 50/50 mix of FCAW and GMAW using metal-core wire. From a CWB perspective, this was no biggie, but from an AWS perspective (which was about 90 percent of what we did), no welders were qualified for GMAW and not one of the four CWIs who worked there seemed concerned. What a mess!

The way I turned that around was by using the CWB two-year retesting requirement. I gave MCAW tests, had them evaluated by the CWB to ensure they met Canadian standards, and evaluated them myself as a CWI to AWS standards. At six-month intervals over a two-year period, those welder qualifications were brought up to speed.

If I were an independent contract CWI, I’d probably pursue the CWB route. But if you work in a shop that’s considering bringing in CWB work, then CWB/CWI reciprocity is the least of your worries.

About the Author
Braun Intertec

Paul Cameron

Braun Intertec

4210 Highway 14 East

Rochester, MN 55904