Tales from the trenches, stories forged in the fires of experience.
The foundations of a successful career always are surrounded by education and certification.
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All right, everyone.
Thank you for joining Did You Know?
The ESCO HVAC Podcast.
So today we're going to we're going to look at things from a broader perspective.
We're hanging out with Aidan, Lucy.
Aidan, how are you today?
Not too bad.
How are you?
I'm doing really well, man.
Just trying to get comfortable with all the transitions that we have in our industries
between equipment and refrigerants and the demand for training, which is like really
escalating here.
And I thought it'd be a great opportunity for us to kind of talk about trades internationally.
So tell us where you're from, Aidan.
I'm from Ireland originally.
I started my refrigeration apprenticeship there in 2005.
And it's very different there because I was down in the country there.
So you know, there's no going to the wholesaler if you need parts.
You either have it in stock or you're you know, you're waiting a few days.
And the training is very different.
It's a four year apprenticeship.
You do seven phases, they call it.
So you have three in training centers and then four with your employer.
Oh, OK.
And your first time in school is actually usually away from home and it's six months.
Wow.
All right.
But it's an actual apprenticeship program.
So here in the United States, we don't think a lot about how the apprenticeship structure
is except for like in the UA.
So the UA is, you know, our traditional apprenticeship program where you're you're doing classes
at a training facility, but you're also getting your hands on training, which I think is the
best way to do any type of learning in the trades.
Right.
You get a combination of the actual classroom experience and the hands on.
So in that four year apprenticeship, I mean, so you start out the fundamentals and I'm
sure you're taking assessments along the way.
How much of that like hands on are you doing per week?
Like how much are you actually with the contractor after you do that like six months and then
after getting that initial training?
Tell us a little bit about that experience.
Well, the way it works is you have to find an employer who'll take you on and then you
get indentured as an apprentice and then you're working.
You have to do six months before you're eligible to go for schooling.
So you're full time every day for six months.
And that's like your first phase, they call it.
Right.
So like the first job I ever did, I mean, it was it was pure fluke.
I'd originally signed up for plumbing, but a friend of mine got the job because he had
a car and I didn't.
So I said, well, I'm going to the beach for a couple of weeks.
I'll see you when I get back.
So I went down to country where we have family and my uncle, I mean, he had ladders on the
roof of his van.
He had a couple of snowflake symbols on his van.
I didn't know what he did.
I know he worked every day.
So he said, you want to work?
I was like, OK.
So my first ever job was a 60 unit split install for a car dealership.
Oh, wow.
And then I was lucky.
He just said, you want to apprentice?
And I was like, sure, why not?
And then it kind of took off from there.
So like for like Ireland, so you have an actual certification.
So when you go through that apprenticeship, what does that look like when you get to the
end?
Are you taking assessments?
Are you proving your skill sets?
Yep.
So school is a mixture of theory and practical.
So they start off, you know, the absolute basics, like they talk about, you know, valence
electrons, you know, electric motor force and amps.
And then they build you into, say, simple series circuits and they'll put in, you know,
a resistance.
They'll give you basic homes.
They'll give you volts and ohms.
You'd figure out the amps, that kind of thing.
And then they will build you all the way up to at the very end, you're making out three
phase wiring diagrams by yourself and finding faults.
Nice.
And you're practical for the first run of school.
They give you, you have a little alcove and it's like, if you need a receptacle or a light,
you've got to wire it.
You have to do the diagram and prove it.
And your first project is an undercounter cooler and you change the compressor.
Your last project is a walk-in freezer that you have to fully pipe, wire and commission,
but you do your piping diagrams, your wiring diagrams.
They want ladders and they want pictorials.
You have to do everything before you can even turn anything on.
That's the thing that I wish we had more of here in the US and we keep pushing for this
whole theory of better HVAC where we're like really getting serious about our trade because
a lot of people don't realize that in many parts of the world, our trade is very advanced.
I mean, talk about this apprenticeship where you're doing plumbing diagrams and electrical
schematics.
You're building all this out beforehand.
You have to understand the design and the installation and the service side of it as
we should.
Right?
Absolutely.
We don't really have that here in the United States unless we get into things like formal
apprenticeship programs like at our UA and we do have that developing here in the United
States where we're looking at the true apprenticeship programs, but there's a lot of hesitance to
that and I wish we could get beyond that barrier.
So you're in Manitoba now, is that correct?
Yes, in Winnipeg.
Okay.
So when you came from Ireland into Winnipeg, tell me about the differences when we get
to like the Canadian style of apprenticeships.
What do they look like for training?
Well, here refrigeration is what they call a compulsory trade in Manitoba and it can
be slightly different province to province.
So it means you cannot touch refrigeration and air conditioning equipment legally unless
you are either an apprentice or a journey person.
Oh, really?
So it's not just like here in the U.S. where you have your 608 and you can actually touch
and handle refrigerants and work on the refrigeration cycle of equipment.
You actually have to be enrolled in an apprenticeship program or completed.
Yeah, you have to be signed up and then you can work on equipment and they have here as
well like they have ozone depletion courses you do for safe handling of refrigerants.
So you have to do those as well.
And then you would have to same idea, it's four years, you do four school four times,
you have to do a mask.
I think it's around 1100, 1200 hours and then you're eligible.
You can go to school and you move on to your level two, your level three, your level four
and your level four you write your inter-provincial, your red seal exam to get your qualification.
No kidding.
Wow.
So it's really like completing a true four year training program.
Like here in the States we would think of a four year program as being like a bachelor's
degree.
But when we look at it from the trades, we don't ever really think about like if you
take a four year apprenticeship in the United States, you get done and it's like, okay,
I've done an apprenticeship program and hopefully I've ended up with like an associate's degree.
But when we look in places like in Canada and in Ireland, I mean, it really is the equivalent
of a four year college degree.
You're going through some pretty extensive training and certifications as well.
Oh, absolutely.
And it's very similar in the way, because I mean, the physics and the science are the
same country to country.
It's just laid out slightly different, but you're doing your commissioning sheets.
You know, they could do the same ladder diagrams and they do all those all the way up the series
parallel circuits till your last one when they actually dive into VFDs and capacitor
banks and all the different types of motors and part winding start.
Like they get really in depth and they just build your knowledge each time.
Wow.
Yeah.
So it helps us get the perspective that, I mean, here in the United States, we're actually
really behind the bar when it comes to the recognition and to the training and the apprenticeships
that our industry really needs to have.
And that was the big push they had here for Red Seal.
So when you can pass your inter-provincial exam, it's 125 questions.
It's 70 and above is a passing mark.
It's all multiple choice.
When you pass now, you can put the letters or S E Red Seal endorsed after your name,
just to bring some more legitimacy to it and make it stand out more.
Yeah.
Makes sense.
When we look at, say if you're like LinkedIn, someone who has a special certification, has
a degree, then it shows that you have accomplished that skill set.
And man.
Exactly.
It's recognition for your years of hard schooling.
And you're also working at the same time too, once you come out of school.
Because here it's nine weeks each time you go to school, except the nice thing they do
here since, I mean, refrigeration HVAC, you're working on gas fired equipment as well.
Yes.
So, I mean, you go to a rooftop unit.
If you don't get a ticket, you know, you could really, if you're looking at black and white,
you should only be looking at the air conditioning.
You shouldn't touch the heating.
So what they do here is each level of refrigeration, you do a week of gas and they credit you.
You're level one domestic gas fitter.
So then you go back when you're done your four years of refrigeration and you do a further
10 weeks and you can write your red seal for domestic gas fitter.
Oh yeah.
Absolutely.
It makes sense.
I mean, you'll only be working on a piece of equipment.
Say I've got a package unit that is air conditioning and it's heating.
Well, if I'm not properly trained in both of those, I can't work on both halves of that
piece of equipment.
I need to be able to understand the theory and I need to understand the design, the troubleshooting
of a gas fired appliance as well as a refrigeration cycle.
And they are very completely different functions.
Yeah.
And it's, it's very well done.
Like all the instructors have passed the red seal.
They've all worked in the field.
Um, they all know the code books inside out and you know, you do like for gas, you a lot
of venting gas pipe sizing.
Then you do troubleshooting and it's cool.
They got like troubleshooting furnaces so they can flick a dip switch and you have to
find a fault.
Yes.
Or they'll give you a boiler and be like, here's a blank diagram with the components.
Here's the boiler.
Figure it out.
Yeah.
You know, I think about the, uh, the competency of, you know, doing something like the red
seal looks like here in the United States, you know, yeah, if you've went through UA
apprenticeship and you've actually got your journeyman license, you validated, you've
went through all these four years of training certifications.
If you didn't take that path and you have worked your way up to the industry like myself,
I, so I did not take the union approach.
I was non-union and I went back for classes and I took classes when I needed to learn
something new, but I never actually ended up with a degree out of that.
I have a lot of classes, but I don't have any certificate to show it except for like
my, my six Oh eight and my master electrician license.
So it's difficult to be able to go to other jurisdictions and show what you've accomplished
versus a true four year apprenticeship like you, you know, you took your apprenticeship
in Ireland.
When you came to Canada, how did they look at that for your apprenticeship that you did
in Ireland in comparison to what the expectations were in Canada?
They will recognize your hours because you have to have around 12 to 13,000 hours and
you can challenge the red seal, but the exams are laid out very different.
Okay.
Sure.
The Irish exam is more, they'll ask you a question.
You have to know the answer and they give you the formulas, but the Canadian exam is
a lot more.
There's a question and it's for multiple choices and they'll move words around or they'll have
one that is a hundred percent wrong when that's very likely wrong.
And then the part that can catch you out is you have two answers, but one is more correct
than the other one.
I get that.
You know, we, we can tend with that a lot here at ESCO, you know, when we're building
assessments is, you know, there's a whole design to building multiple choice questions.
So when you look at the United States, do you see any equivalency in the United States
as that are comparable to like the red seal and to your Irish apprenticeship?
I think from what I saw, just looking online, a lot of the union ones seemed to have really
good setups.
Like they've, you know, they've got racks and they've got E2 for energy management,
all in their training centers.
And where I'm working now, Rack Services, like it's an opco, the Iricom group, they've
got a great training setup down in California where they have a full actual, you know, grocery
store piped and wired and got racks and cases and they can do all the training in house
and they have all their own trainers, like really know their stuff.
Yeah.
And that's how I grew up in it.
So I was a grocery refrigeration technician.
So when you say E2, I'm like, yes, that's me.
I was a refrigeration HVAC and electrical management with E2s.
And it's very specialized and a lot of people in our industry don't even get to that point,
not recognizing that it is absolutely a thing that has to be learned in the industry when
you're getting into controls and automations and especially when you're getting into larger
refrigeration.
And it is difficult to find those trainings, I think here in the United States, there are
some, but they're not recognized and they're not set in an actual curriculum into an apprenticeship.
So that's one of the things we've been trying to promote here at ESCO and HVAC excellence
is that in the United States, we really need to start focusing on what that four-year apprenticeship
program would look like, especially for contractors.
We need to be able to elevate the proficiency here in the industry, not just in residential,
but in commercial and industrial applications so that we're getting the correct knowledge.
Because it's one thing to be able to learn, to be able to work on specific equipment for
a specific contractor or for a specific facility.
But when we get out in the industry, it's not really that.
I mean, we're going to be working on a variety of different things, different designs, different
applications, and without having a broad education, you're going to be in some unknown territories
quite often.
Absolutely.
And I mean, when you're saying about the ESCO Institute too, like you'll find interesting,
the book we use every level to get us to the point of writing the Red Seal is Refrigeration
and Air Conditioning Technologies that Eugene Silverstein wrote.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So the books and the education is there.
It's just like I said, you need to get it across the board and get it country and statewide
recognized and then people will find it easier to move around themselves as techs or be recognized.
Just make people's lives a lot easier and everyone's at the one standard.
Yeah.
Because I think about that from particularly our non-union contractors, which is a majority
of the United States.
If a technician is moving across the country, United States, and they go to another contractor
and they're looking for a job, it's typically they're earning their merit based on experience,
right?
What the resume looks like, how many years of experience, but I always keep preaching,
well, how do you know that that 20 year in the field technician has been doing the right
thing for 20 years or they've been doing the wrong thing over and over and over for 20
years, right?
So you've got to be able to evaluate and you have to be able to know that that person has
been continuing their education.
So from an edgy, continuing educational stance for the red seal, are there requirements that
you continue education after you've acquired your red seal certification?
No, you don't have to let, yeah, there's nothing like Nate or hours you have to do to keep
your accreditation, but you can keep going back and doing more red seals if you wish
and doing more trades.
Sure, absolutely.
So it's not just like you get one certification and you're done.
You actually can go back and re-specialize in additional certifications.
Yeah, like now in Manitoba, there's a big surplus of electricians.
So there's a lot of electricians who are going back and doing four years and becoming refrigeration
techs, which is great because then they have the electrical and they have the refrigeration
side.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And that's what I'm hoping we end up attracting here in the United States.
You know, we're looking at around 130,000 technician shortage in the HVAC industry.
And we look at some of the other industries and go, well, hopefully we can attract other
people.
Hopefully we can start being, you know, recognized as a higher skilled job than what most people
realize that we really are.
Because, you know, when you start thinking about what we work on, you know, there's a
lot of critical environments that we work on.
We provide services that, you know, keep medicines alive.
We provide services that allow food to be transported over long distances.
We provide services that keeps the quality of air to a point where people can breathe.
We have so many different aspects of our industry that are crucial, which we found, especially
during the COVID-19 pandemic, that we realized that, you know, we were declared essential
workers.
And so we really have this misperception in the United States of what our skill is.
And it's nice to see that other countries have recognized that you really do need to
go through a formal training program and be recognized for your accomplishments along the
way.
Oh, absolutely.
And I think they need to push the people too, as it's not just a job and a career.
Like it's a lifestyle.
Like I've moved from, I went from Ireland to Vancouver, then I came from Vancouver to
Manitoba.
And like I've been driving on the ice roads and getting the service calls and driving
over frozen rivers in the middle of winter.
And, you know, I pull in the side of the road to make sure I got enough of everything.
You know, bears popping out of trees beside me.
Like you're going to see and go places like...
It's amazing.
I had one Friday where I was fixing an ice cream machine and, you know, I was talking
to a lady while I was there.
And then the next day I had the parts.
I'm like, you know, do I want to go back this late in the day?
And I'm like, well, maybe she'll be there and I'll talk to her.
And now we're married and have two kids.
Isn't it amazing?
And if I hadn't gone back that day, she wasn't working a day shift for six months.
So like the trades can really take you places if you, if you just invest in yourself and
just go for it.
Yeah.
That's what I always like to be able to point that out to new people who are looking at
our industry as, you know, potential career that, you know, take when you take that first
step into learning our industry, just be aware of all of the opportunities that there are.
It's not like you're just going to be working on residential air conditioners or residential
furnaces.
There's so many new opportunities and, you know, high end technology and places that
you'll go to that you've never dreamed as long as you push yourself, take those initiatives
to train and to get certified and be open to new experiences.
So let's think about from like the junior apprenticeship or, you know, going into the
trades net first year, what was it like in Ireland when you went in?
Was it nervous?
I mean, tell me what the atmosphere is like on that first year of learning.
Well you find out refrigeration is a trait because you'd no idea what it was before.
You just knew your fridge was cold.
Yeah, exactly.
It opens up your perception.
Yeah, you've no idea this is a thing and you know, you're so I'd say it's like, it's definitely
very daunting.
You know, you take a cover off a mini split and you want to make sure you're flaring a
pipe right.
And you're like, well, I can't even spell flaring yet.
So, you know, this should be interesting.
Exactly.
Definitely a lot of learning.
You know, you're being introduced to, okay, I got to get pipe from A to B. How do I do
it?
And they're like, well, go grab some rod, go grab some hangers and some cable tray.
And you're like, okay, what is all of that?
Right.
And then what can be daunting for people is like, I was lucky, you know, I had very good
journey people at the time.
You know, I never had one who was, I came up and I was treated, you know, not great.
And I'm going to pass that on instead of breaking the cycle.
Like I was lucky.
Because things are explained and, you know, it's kind of show you once and let you run.
Yeah.
But there's definitely, because it's a smaller country and a smaller market, like, because
I never worked in Dublin in the capital much.
So I can't speak to that.
It was more down the country.
So I could be working on a beer line cooler, then you could be on a walk-in box and then
you could be fixing a soup hand blender in the afternoon.
Yeah, exactly.
So it's very, very broad, but the training is very good.
And the industry is definitely growing over there a lot, they're starting to do a lot
more trade shows and conferences and bring it on, kind of get like the AHR level.
Yes.
Yeah, absolutely.
But it is, it's definitely, yeah, very different.
Like here, you know, if you need something, you just run to the wholesaler in town, one
of the five or six that are there, right?
You don't have that option.
Yep.
I find it very interesting when we start talking about, you know, our industry in different
countries and the similarities and the differences.
So this is really interesting to see the different side of, you know, the expectations.
I mean, think about that, a smaller country that has more requirements in training than
what we would have here in the United States.
And I think that says a lot about how much more we need to push our industry and progress
our industry to make it more appealing for the younger generations and to help break
that stigma, that it's not just a dirty career, that it is absolutely an opportunity to work
with your hands and to change the world around you and provide services to your community.
And it's a great place to be.
I've absolutely enjoyed my journey.
Oh, yeah.
Like you said, like I've been in so many, you know, crazy old buildings downtown and
crawl spaces under government buildings.
And like you really go and see some cool stuff or, you know, into the football stadium before
it's open for opening day and you're you and two or three other people in there and you're
getting to see all the places no one gets to go.
Like you'll see some great stuff.
Yeah.
In my younger days, I had all the free ice cream and beer a young man could ever want.
Oh, exactly.
It lived a dream, right?
Well, it's there.
That's right.
All right.
Aidan, Lucy, I sure appreciate you hanging out with us, giving us perspective of what
training and apprenticeship looks like in Ireland as well as Canada.
I look forward to diving deeper into these conversations.
Thanks a lot, Chris.
Appreciate it.