What does this trade look like?

- So plumbers are the folks that will furnish fresh water to a building or to a site, and then also provide for evacuation of the waste water that occurs after that water has been used. So plumbers do a lot more than just water. You could become a fitter, so that would be building and piping a system to safely transport medical gases, steam, so there's a lot of different aspects to the plumbing trade as well. - So when entering the trade, you work side by side with either a journeyman or foreman level individual who then pass down his knowledge to you in how to install properly, how to do things in a timely matter, how to clean up after yourself and just to educate another individual that's coming in to this trade. - So our industry unite association, industry's about plumbing, which is all domestic water systems. You know, drinking water, plumbing fixtures, you know, sinks, now the recirculation of the systems and reusing that water. What people may not know about our industry is that our mechanics are constantly learning. New methods, new systems are being developed constantly. It will take the full five years and then some to learn everything that you do need to know. Our steam fitters and pipe fitters, they install the piping and equipment for those systems. Our HVAC, service technicians, they'll go and they'll actually service those. We provide heating and cooling to homes and buildings alike. The basis of everything that we do is co-driven, engineer driven. Our mechanics will get design drawings and work off of those to build the systems per plumbing code, the mechanical code, all the building standards that are in place to, you know, protect the end-user and to make sure that's a functional, mechanical plumbing system. - Like the May gas class, it's a very intense class. It's actually a whole different style of plumbing than what anybody's used to. It's working with pipe that has to be completely clean all day every day, every time we touch it. Your tools can't have any oils on them. It's just, it's again a different beast within the industry. It's a even cleaner what we call environment than you would say per se just a normal construction site. Safety is number one in the industry. OSHA, here, is just Cal OSHA as we call them is on us about anything and everything. Recently they have said that, you know, silica dust needs to come down to basically a zero. So anything that's concrete related needs to start being watered down heavily, so that way we can create a dust free environment where we don't have to have people wearing respirators, and worrying about lungs, their lungs, and everything else like that, like where safety is just number one. We take a step back sometimes to think, is this the safest, smartest way of doing it? If not, then we need to find a way to make it a safer way to do it. The technology's really what's kind of boosted the big waves of this economy, truthfully, and how it changes the plumbing industry out is that we can actually design a building on full on computer. - We're very proud of the diversity in our program. We have people from all areas, all walks of life, that are participating in our program. We have female plumbers, female HVAC service technicians and steam fitters. They're flourishing in the industry. We're very happy to have them in the program. We are definitely seeing more women enter the industry each and every day, and they put in just as much work or just as hard of work as men do. We encourage all different types of people to come into the trade just that want to learn a skill. Truthfully it's a great thing, and it's a good clean environment for everybody. And it's safe, that's the main thing. - What it means to be a journey level worker is that you have the education to provide for yourself, to provide for your family. Once you have that education, nobody can take that away from you. You will have that for the rest of your life. You really have to want to be outside, in the cold, in the heat. You have to be able to want to get your hands dirty. You have to just be able to want to be there every day. Show up, put a smile on, and just have the ability to be taught. If you have all those characteristics by yourself, then the trades, it's all yours. I mean you can, the sky's the limits. - We see enjoyment that they have of doing their job and knowing that they could drive by a building at any time and say, hey I worked on that building. I'm pretty proud of what I did. There's a lot of passion involved with this for people who've been doing it a long time. - There's a lot of pride in the work that you do, and once it's complete, from when you see a rough scale of something, a blank building, and you turn in, it turns into this amazing space that truthfully you would love to work in each and every day. But that accomplishment of just, it got to where it is today and if it weren't for you doing that, then you know the hard work, it wouldn't look as good as it does. It's the most exciting thing ever, actually. It's sad, walking off the job for the final time, sometimes you look at, it's like, man that was a really good job. (laughs)