Page 14 - HIWT Winter 2011 World of Welding

THE WORLD OF WELDING http://www.welding.org

WelDinG maKeS iT all POSSiBle

When Aaron Stevenson first attended Hobart Institute in 2007,
he admittedly had a lot to learn.

“Anybody who wants to be a welder should come to Hobart
Institute,” says Aaron. “You need to burn up all those new
materials you are given by practicing. All the practice time
gives you the opportunity to become really proficient by the
time you complete your training. ”

Underwater welding caught Aaron’s attention while he was
at Hobart and he explored potential diving schools and their
costs. Setting his eye on Divers Institute of Technology (DIT)
in Seattle, Washington, Aaron knew he would first have to
earn some money to follow his plans.

He found his first job after taking the HIWT’s Combination
Structural and Pipe Welding Program by searching the job Aaron Stevenson with Instructor Ernie Jones
bank at www.welding.org. He went to take a welding test at
General Dynamics in Connecticut and passed with a clean
X-ray the first time. Impressed by his skill, the manager hired “On that job, I was doing mirror welding in confined spaces
him. on submarines,” explained Aaron.

This gave him good experience and provided him with the
money he needed by July 2009 to train at DIT in Seattle. In
April 2010, Aaron had an opportunity to attend the Wet Welder
Training course provided by Hydroweld USA in Weston,
Florida. He earned his AWS D3.6 Class B certification for
underwater welding up to 33 feet and then went to work for
Subsea Solutions Alliance / Miami Divers in Miami, Florida.
www.subseasolutions.com

“Basically, Subsea Solutions does any repairs a shipyard can
do, but they do it underwater,” described Aaron. “We were
patching cruise liners and I was involved in the emergency
underwater welding repairs of a ship that ran up on a reef. The
repairs we were able to make gave the ship the ability to go to
a planned dry-dock location for further renovation, rather than
sending it to the nearest emergency dry-dock, which saved
them a lot of money.”

This past September, Aaron returned to Hobart Institute and
worked with Instructor Ernie Jones for a week to enhance
his pipe welding skills in preparation for a test to do a pipe
welding project in Antarctica for Raytheon.

(Continued on page 17)

Preparing for a dive at Divers Institute of Technology in Seattle.
(Photo courtesy of Divers Institute)

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