Post: #1846

(10-14-2013 06:11 PM)scotian Wrote:  Temm, can't you do your first year power engineering on-line?

Hey man, from what I understand, you can do it all by correspondence--but it's the time in an actual plant that you have to worry about. If you take the two year course, all your labs at SAIT and NAIT count for steam time. When you take the course online, you have to setup your own steam time, which is very difficult from what I hear.

There's two parts to every level in power engineering (part A and B). You can't take part B of your 4th class or any other classes I believe until you have so much steam time in a plant or do the SAIT or NAIT labs--the labs at SAIT and NAIT fill up fast!

I was going to take the correspondence route via NAIT and started contacting plants here in Saskatchewan for steam time, forget about it. They were like, "you have to go through SIAST (which has no online option) or we won't even look at you". It's BS like this that makes me hate this province lol.

Every power engineer I've talked to loves it though, especially those that are outdoorsmen. If you can get your 3rd or even 2nd, sounds like you can have it made. Work 7 nights and then 7 days, then be off. Some of those guys are like, "I only work 6 months out of the year".

Medicine Hat College is another option as well for power engineering--I heard they have a brand new state of the art lab, so another option if anyone's interested. To me it just seems really saturated at the lower level (4th class) and getting steam time is tough by correspondence. But there are guys that have done it by contacting pulp mills, breweries, and hospitals and volunteering there services for free.

SIAST offers a power engineering program in Saskatoon but you have to apply between Oct. 1 and Feb. 15. I know one guy that took power engineering in Swift Current but had to do his lab (only 3 weeks) in Saskatoon which he said was crappy.