If you’re a bright, talented student with a mechanical aptitude and a desire to work with advancing technology, there may be an exciting career for you in the building trades.
Pitt Meadows Plumbing (PMP), a leader in building and installing mechanical systems in new construction projects, is looking to expand its 200-member-strong team – its biggest ever. The company is celebrating its 40th anniversary with an open house on Oct. 26, and they’d like to show the public, and especially students, how challenging and exciting a plumbing career can be.
“They’ll see a lot of our innovative techniques. They’ll see our new technology and they’ll see our prefabrication processes,” said James Zelinski, the company’s Chief Administrative Officer.
“A career in the trades isn’t necessarily what they think it is.”
PMP works on large projects. They convert technical drawings into 3-D models that show them exactly how the plumbing and heating systems can be built. Once the designs are complete, the company’s team of expert tradespeople assembles large pieces in their 50,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. These sections are shipped out to the site and connected.
For plumbers, it’s a far cry from clearing clogged drains.
And it’s a career with a future. The company’s owners – Stewart Robinson, Stephen Robinson, and Matthew Robinson – are all plumbers by trade. Now they work at building the business and envisioning a technology-driven, innovative future for the company.
Employees have terrific opportunities for advancement. “I just got off the phone with a fellow who started as a plumber, and now he’s a project manager running multi-million dollar projects,” Zelinski said.
He’s excited to show people the many opportunities in their innovative workplace.
“They’ll see our stainless-steel welding areas that have automated technology, and they’ll see our carbon welding area, which is where we weld big cast iron piping, leveraging innovative technologies and automated tooling,” he said.
“Stainless steel prefabrication, copper prefabrication in-wall assemblies, mechanical rooms being built here and shipped out—all the things that the engineers and architects are envisioning.”
To get the people they need, PMP actually runs its own plumbing school in partnership with the Industry Training Authority and Pacific Vocational College.
The open house runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 26. There will be food trucks on site. The company invites everyone to help them celebrate, and they’d love for high school students to come have a look. “If your kid has an aptitude for working with their hands—man or woman, or boy or girl—they can have a very rewarding career in the trades,” Zelinski said.
