Making Metal Work Training Course - CMP Engineers Pty Ltd

1. Background

A training course, titled ‘Metal Where It Matters’, was originally developed by Jim Haggart to educate tradespeople and engineers about how to effectively design and repair mobile equipment. As Jim retired, CMP Engineers purchased the rights to the Metal Where It Matters book and certain materials used in delivering the original course. From here, the Making Metal Work training course was born.

2. Challenge

Unexpected downtime due to equipment failure is extremely costly and can pose a safety risk. CMP Engineers has been involved in hundreds of failure investigations, and we have witnessed very expensive incidents caused by a lack of expertise from those who carried out the repair. Examples include cracks initiating from simple identification marks that have been intentionally added to components, failures initiated from not following welding procedures and make-shift repairs that fail to adequately deal with operational loads, resulting in catastrophic failure.

Overall, our clients are often faced with severe time and budget constraints when completing repairs. This makes it difficult to engage engineers or other experts who can assist with the design and implementation of these repairs.

3. Solution

The Making Metal Work course was designed to give engineers and tradespeople the knowledge to implement effective repairs and avoid mistakes that could later prove to be costly or worse, dangerous. The course covers the basics of engineering, how to implement basic repairs and what to avoid. Many case studies are also presented during the course, highlighting real-world examples that relate to the course material.

4. Outcomes

CMP Engineers has been running the Making Metal Work course since 2013, and we have delivered 27 courses to date. The feedback from attendees has been outstanding, with approximately 80% of attendees giving an overall evaluation of ‘Excellent’ (the highest category). 99% of attendees rate the course as above average or excellent.

Feedback from the attendees includes:

“Making Metal Work was very well presented with many technical subjects explained and questions responded to in a highly knowledgeable and easy-to-understand way. I’ve learned a lot in the last 3 days.”

“I thoroughly enjoyed the course. It was valuable and very relevant to my field of work.”

“The course content was very clear, with excellent practical case studies.”
“The examples of failure and constant flow of props and demonstrations with gadgets were extremely valuable.”