By Neil Mansfield
Metal Fabrication Teacher
Assabet Valley Regional Vocational High School
Marlborough, Massachusetts

Mr. George Bumilla, a pipe welder from Taunton, Massachusetts and a member of Union Local 798, visited Assabet Valley Regional Vocational High School in Marlborough, Massachusetts recently to demonstrate downhill pipe welding to our junior metal fabrication class.  Mr. Bumilla arrived at the school with his pipe welding rig (truck) so that students could see what a mobile welding truck welding business looks like and how a small business as a welding contractor is operated.  Assabet students had an opportunity to watch and participate with Mr. Bumilla as he explained how to prepare, fit up, and weld 12-inch schedule 80 heavy wall pipe.

Within a two-week period, Mr. Bumilla visited the high school three times to present career opportunities, demonstrate pipeline welding, and prepare the students to participate in an annual pipe welding competition in May 2007 at Notch Mechanical Piping Systems Co. in Springfield, Massachusetts.  Mark Rudis, a Union pipe welder, also gave up work days to take time to visit the vocational students and demonstrate his talents.

Each year since 1999, Notch Mechanical Constructors of Chicopee, MA, hosts a state-wide pipe welding challenge competition.  This year, Assabet Valley welding instructors Mark Chludenski and George Aziz accompanied the students to the competition where they go head-to-head with other vocational welding students to test their welding skills in a 1-G open root pipe welding position test.  Students are permitted time to prepare, tack, and feather their tack welds before the actual timed pipe welding competition starts. 

A cash prize of $500.00 is awarded to the student and an additional cash prize of $500.00 goes to the winner’s school welding program to be used for hand tools and related welding equipment.  Each student that participates in the competition gets a full package to include a leather welding jacket, welding helmet, gloves, safety glasses, chipping hammer and wire brush.

This is an excellent approach to help develop young vocational metal fabrication / welding students in becoming skilled pipe welders in the state of Massachusetts.  Several winners of this competition have gone on to graduate from their welding programs and have been employed at Notch Mechanical Constructors as pipe welders.

Mr. Chludenski and Mr. Aziz, who also have a strong industrial background, really make a difference in our welding program.  We have fun working together and teaching our students to become skilled welders and fabricators.  The state of Massachusetts is currently experiencing a severe shortage of skilled and licensed pipe welders.  We are grateful to have such a program offered to our welding students in the North East.

Neil Mansfield’s  career has been formed by heavy industrial welding and fabrication beginning with the U.S. Navy Construction Seabees; learning experiences at Hobart Institute of Welding Technology; excellent welding challenges from General Dynamics Electric Boat submarine welding and fabrication; construction from sky scrapers to pipelines to sheet metal welding and titanium bicycle  welding; and the creative world of artistic metalworking.  This is the background that he brings each day into the classroom to share with his students.