Plumbing Africa July 2017 | Page 17

EVENTS AND EXHIBITIONS 15 WorldSkills Abu Dhabi, October 2017 It is cool to be a 21st-century artisan, and South Africa aims to add five new skills every time we compete. The next WorldSkills competition will be held in Abu Dhabi in October 2017 and aims to: • Promote exchange between young professionals from various regions of the world. • Exchange skills, experience, and technological innovations. • Raise the understanding in governments, education, and industry to the importance of skills training. • Raise the awareness of youth and those who influence the youth to opportunities available in skilled professions. Why are skills competitions so important? • Training, qualifying, and competing in the WorldSkills competition equals 4–5 years of professional training. • Builds character, confidence, commitment, and self- esteem. • Helps align and increase the quality of the required standards in vocational and educational training systems. • Helps benchmark the educational training system against industry, public demand, and across borders. • The challenge of a competition brings fun and exciting elements into teaching and training. • Provides the validation that the mastery of a skill requires practical learning and training over time. • Raises quality, promotes professional development, and drives improvements in vocational training. • WorldSkills offers the infrastructure and competition experience to engage with a number of target groups, from students in grade school and secondary school to youth, governments, and educators. • Since the 2003 WorldSkills Competition, a combined 992 000 people have visited the competitions, with 4 931 competitors at the global level. In the plumbing category Plumbers install water, sanitation, drainage, and heating pipes for houses and industrial sites. The tasks can include natural and manufactured gas and compressed air pipe installations. Pipes may be welded, soft-soldered, hard- soldered, threaded, and jointed using proprietary fittings. Pipe jointing by machine crimping may also be used. Pipe www.plumbingafrica.co.za In action at the WorldSkills competition held in Durban earlier this year. A complete piping and drainage installation from the Durban competition. bending may be carried out by hydraulically operated or hand-operated bending machines and by applying heat (black mild steel pipe only), with the bending angles only being measured for machine-made bends and the radiuses and angles being measured for heat-made bends. The installation and fixing of the pipes to various building components is an integral component of the skill, as is the installation of terminal fittings, sanitary and heating appliances and components, for example showers, basins, WCs, boilers, radiators, and circulators. PA For more information, visit http://www.worldskillssa.dhet.gov.za July 2017 Volume 23 I Number 5