By NICK STEWART
Following the success of its inaugural class and a growing interest among northeastern companies, Northern College is currently hosting the second round of its Maintenance Management Professional program.
“We’re continually trying to bring programming to the North that’s new and innovative, stuff that we can bring here so it’s not only offered in southern Ontario,” says Norm Bolduc, training consultant, Apprenticeship, Workforce Development and Training.
“We want to provide the same advantages to the North as other regions have had in the past. What’s more, it’s important that we bring attention to the maintenance field so that it gets the respect it deserves, because properly managed maintenance can represent from tens of thousands to millions of dollars that can be saved.”
Northern is offering the program in partnership with the Plant Engineering and Maintenance Association of Canada (PEMAC), which has designed and offered the course throughout the country, including Cambrian College in Sudbury and Confederation College in Thunder Bay.
Referring to the Maintenance Management Professional designation as the industry “gold standard,” Bolduc says the program is specifically targeted at potential maintenance managers seeking to move up the ladder, and at existing managers who want to develop additional skillsets.
The program’s first 13 students graduated in November, following nearly two years of study. Graduates include employees from Goldcorp, Rio Tinto, Weyerhaeuser in Wawa and Grant Forest Products in Englehart. The second class recently got underway, with graduation for the 18 students expected within 12 to 14 months.
With topics ranging from accounting to predictive maintenance to human resources, the program is delivered across eight modules. Individual modules are delivered over several days, though the timing of each set of classes must be agreed upon by the group given the professional nature of the program’s students. The program culminates in a project which weaves together the previous modules, and must be submitted for approval by PEMAC before the students are allowed to graduate.
Participants have already had positive feedback from PEMAC, whose president told Bolduc that their inaugural class’ projects “raised the bar” for the organization’s expectations for project submissions.
Such results are a testament to the workforce in the northeast, Bolduc says, and are a sign of what the region has to offer.
Having professionals from different companies across a variety of industries also provides additional benefits as participants network and share maintenance techniques, Bolduc says.
“Participants have talked about the fact that part of the benefit of this experience is the discussions they have amongst themselves and their peers with the types of things that they’re doing. You can take something that’s being done at Goldcorp, and you might be able to adapt it to Domtar or the City of Timmins. Although they’re different work environments, you can work together some of those ideas.”
As maintenance equipment and procedures change in plants throughout Canada, the Northern College’s curriculum changes to adapt. This is one of the advantages of the school’s partnership with a national agency, Bolduc says.
“As maintenance issues are continually changing, the program evolves with that. That’s the fun part about working with PEMAC, because they’re continually evolving and adjusting their program to meet the needs of industry, which is really exciting.”
