Riverstone Waterjets hosted their first three-day High Pressure Water Jetter (HPWJ) Courses in Leduc, Alberta for a customer that provides manpower to Industrial Cleaning Contractors. Over two classes, 18 staff members were trained by Arian Van Den Honnard of Derc Salotech and Keith Tellier of Riverstone Waterjets Ltd.

Arian Van Den Honnard is the head of training at Derc Advies, the Derc Salotech Training School, that is based on the outskirts of Rotterdam in Holland. For more than nine years, Arian has traveled the world delivering the Derc HPWJ course in Saudi Arabia, Australia, Russia, Turkey, and many more countries in between.

Keith Tellier joined Riverstone Waterjets Ltd. more than a year and a half ago to head up the service and Hammelmann rentals division. He came to us with 8 years of hands-on experience and vast product knowledge, having been a contractor involved in industrial cleaning at pretty much all the major plants, refineries and mines of western Canada’s oil patch with BC Masterblasters (subsequently Envirosystems, and now due to its recent purchase, known as Terrapure).

Together, Arian and Keith taught the same course that is taught in Benelux region of Europe (Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg). In this area of Europe, it is required by law that anyone picking up a high-pressure hose in a commercial activity must be registered with SIR, the overseeing regulatory body.

In class sizes no larger than 10 people, each morning was spent in the classroom defining and understanding: roles and responsibilities, duties of care, certification of in-use equipment, inspection, testing, preparation and execution of high-pressure water jetting activities. The afternoons were spent getting hands on with the high-pressure pumps, automation, tools, and safety equipment that allows jobs to be performed in a safe and competent manner.

The focus of the class is based around a decision tree that requires the student to approach every task with the idea that the task should be done in a fully automated manner with the worker outside of the immediate work environment. While this is the ideal situation, it is not always possible. As the waterjetter mentally descends the decision tree, towards a more involved way of completing the task, the waterjetter must be able to identify all the extra precautions that they must put in place in order to complete the task with the least amount of risk added to the job.

In Europe, at the end of the course, an outside and wholly independent examiner from SIR will come in and set a theory and practical exam, with no same day resits allowed.

While we are not yet in the position to facilitate this level of external oversight, and we wish to make clear that Riverstone is in no way associated with the SIR. We feel it is important that we work closely with Derc Salotech’s training school, as they have been one of the leaders in Europe graduating approximately 7500 students through their HPWJ program. It is a course that thoroughly fulfills the requirements of a third-party curriculum that is the most stringently regulated in the world. We believe that if we are going to teach a training course, that we should aim to deliver the same core principals and fundamentals that underpin the Derc Salotech Advies – HPWJ course.

We are very proud to say that at the end of the two training sessions Arian gave a glowing account of Keith Tellier’s performance and approved Riverstone Waterjets Ltd. as a partner in North America.

If you would like further information regarding Riverstone’s HPWJ course, please email Mike@riverstonestg.wpengine.com or call Mike or Keith at 780 612 1315.