The UK National SkillWeld Welding Competition

This year, the finals of the competition, after a series of passive heats and semi-finals, took place at the TWI The Welding Institute in Cambridge in April. Joe Cosgrove 19 from Hartlepool Doosan Power Systems was the winner, with 2nd place going to Alistair Wilson 19 from Tillicoultry, Clakmannanshire and 3rd place to Ryan Smith 20 from Belper, Derbyshire.

Joe said: “The competition was very enjoyable and I recommend it to others.” He was amongst 10 highest scoring competitors from the regional semi-finals to go through to the 3 day final.

The finalists were judged on over 50 different elements on test pieces which included a Low Carbon Steel Fabrication involving multi-process and various joint configurations, a Stainless Steel Pipe Butt Joint DC TIG an Aluminium Fabrication with fully penetrated Butt Welds in varying positions, and two Butt Joints in Low Carbon Steel using two welding processes and subject to radio-graphic inspection.

Adrian Hawkins, Managing Director of Weldability Sif, through the Weldability Sif Foundation is a very keen advocate of the development of young persons in the skills of welding. Adrian will tell you that over the last five years, almost a quarter of all registered and certified welders in the UK have left the industry, representing a decline of 18,000 welders leaving around only 58,000 skilled UK welders,

In addition to being one of the industry sponsors of Skillweld 2012, he decided that something had to be done to meet the decline and this was, that the UK needed to educate and train a new generation of UK-based welders and so the Weldability Sif Foundation was set up. Since its formation, it has entered into partnership with EAL and working alongside the TWI, The Foundation has so far helped over 20 colleges to install specialist welder training facilities, each with seven distinct and new EAL qualifications to help seal the gap in untrained welders.

Adrian said: “My welding career goes back many years and in that time, I have seen many skilled welders go out of our industry. However I find it so encouraging to see these young welders in SkillWeld 2012 as the future of UK manufacturing and we are proud to continue our sponsorship of the competition into the future. Recently we have seen UK manufacturing bucking the trend and with major build programmes rolling out in the renewable and sustainable energy markets expecting to make the UK self-sufficient for energy, this project alone will require some 20,000 trained welders.”