Edmonton Valve and NAIT – A Relationship 20 Years in the Making

Edmonton is fortunate to have a variety of post-secondary educational institutes spread out across the city, with a vast offering of courses and programs for the industry demands of our province. One of these outstanding schools is the Northern Alberta Institute of Alberta (NAIT), the largest apprentice program in Canada. 

Here a student demonstrates how to properly bend a piece of copper tubing during a safety seminar hosted by Chris Horne

NAIT was established in 1962 and has since been producing a remarkably skilled workforce, including graduates from their Instrumentation Engineering Technology program.  This nationally accredited program provides extensive training in industrial measurement and control, for an industry that has seen an increase in demand for trained professionals.

Edmonton Valve & Fitting has been partnering with NAIT and this program for over 20 years, with one of our account managers, Chris Horne, working alongside the team at NAIT.  He has assisted in providing students and apprentices with seminars on proper tube fitting installation practices, tube fitting safety, and accurate tube bending – all requirements of the program with a mandatory passing grade.

We have also had the privilege of sponsoring a scholarship called the Brian Clarke Award, which is available to a first year student of the Instrumentation Engineering Technology program or a first year instrument technician apprenticeship student.  It is awarded to a recipient each winter on the basis of achievement in instrumentation workshop practice.

Every January we invite the NAIT Instrumentation students to an open house at our facility for an in-depth building tour, a variety of product demonstrations, and industry application examples, plus a free pizza dinner. It’s a great way for the students to get exposed to real life work situations, and for us to get to know our future workforce.

Throughout the years we have seen over 3000 students attend and pass our seminars in the Instrumentation Engineering Technology program, something that we are all very proud of.  And more recently, we became a major sponsor of a newly constructed building, the Spartan Centre for Instrumentation Technology on Main Campus. This facility was established to address the expanding requirement of the instrumentation trade in Alberta.

This year, for the first time, we will be attending the NAIT Career Fair on January 21, 2014. So if you are in and around the NAIT building make sure you come check us out at booth #68!