Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: omeone once said that life is like a baseball gameslow stretches punctuated by mad flurries of activity.It's also true of the coatings industry.For many of us, the winter months are relatively quiet as Mother Nature puts a stop to myriad outdoor projects.After several weeks of inactivity it can feel a lot like standing deep in the middle of left field.But spring is almost here.And just like baseball players across the nation, many of us are getting back into the "swing" of things.The pro ball players go to training camp, and so do many of us in the coatings industry.I recently attended a training camp (of sorts) when I took NACE's weeklong Coatings Inspector Training and Certification Program, Session I, in Anaheim, California.Just like a pro bailer needs to measure himself against colleagues, in order to understand the projects that I write about, I needed to actually spray coatings.I needed training.I needed to feel the kick of the gun as I pulled the trigger.I needed to discover that the slightest change in fingerpressure makes the difference between just-right and wa-a-a-y too thick.Did I ever learn!And just like the pro ball players who leave training camp committed to entering the game and giving it their all, I left the CIP training program invigorated and enthused about this industry of ours.Having spoken to my fellow classmates, I find that this feeling is universal.The benefits of trainingdeeper knowledge of skills, self-assuredness, and a recommitment to entering the game and giving it our allfar outweigh any costs.And there are costs, not only of time, but also of finances.In addition to the cost of the class itself, there is airfare, lodging, mealsas well as the cost of simply being off the job for a week.But I now have firsthand experience that the CIP training program is worth the cost in time and money both.It's lack of training that is expensiveas is abundantly clear in "Never Again: Tank Project Disaster" (page 56).The importance of training and preparation is also highlighted in "A Safe Bet: Fire-Proofing Steel in a Casino Parking Garage" (page 32) and "Specifications: The Shell Game" (page 40).Any ball player will tell you that it takes training to be in the big leagues.And they're only talking about a game.In the multi-million dollar coatings industrywhere an untrained mistake can actually cost livescan we afford to ignore our own training season?Jennifer
Source: CoatingsPro
Author: Jennifer Kramer
Institution: NACE International
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4408627992