Power Engineering Technician (Fourth Class)

Behind every hospital’s heat, every potash mine’s steam and every refinery’s process line is a certified power engineer watching the boilers. Suncrest College’s Power Engineering Technician (Fourth Class) is a 32-week Saskatchewan Polytechnic certificate taught at the Trades & Technology Centre on Suncrest’s Yorkton campus, arranged as two classroom semesters and a short third semester on a plant site.

Semester one lays the technical base with ENGP 190 Boiler and Boiler Systems, THER 185 Thermodynamics (4th Class), ENGP 179 Applied Mechanics (Fourth Class), ELEC 188 Basic Electricity 1, INST 182 Instrumentation and SFTY 172 Safety, Legislation and Codes, supported by MATH 299 Intermediate Algebra and Basic Trigonometry, TCOM 105 Communications for Technicians and COMP 172 Introduction to Microsoft Word and Excel. Semester two turns to plant equipment through ENGP 183 Prime Movers, ENGP 186 Pumps, Compressors, and Lubrication, ENGP 191 Boiler Controls and Safety Devices, ENGP 178 Heating Systems, RFRG 195 Refrigeration (4th Class), RFRG 183 Air Conditioning, WTER 182 Water Treatment (4th Class), PROP 198 Plant and Process Operations and CLTR 200 Culture and Diversity.

The Yorkton centre houses a functioning high-pressure steam lab. In ENGP 180 Power Lab 1 you learn the major steam plant components, and in ENGP 187 Power Lab 2 you produce steam and operate turbines, heat exchangers, pumps and auxiliary fuel systems, while ENGP 181 and ENGP 188 build maintenance routines. WORK 185 Work Experience 1 then puts you in an operating plant for 60 hours. Graduates earn one year of Fourth Class qualifying time from the Technical Safety Authority of Saskatchewan (TSASK) and can challenge the TSASK Fourth Class and Refrigeration Engineer exams, with Suncrest’s Power Engineering (Third Class) as the next step.

Fourth Class power engineers and process operators work in utility plants, refineries, hospitals, pulp and paper mills, breweries, mines, gas processing plants, heavy oil upgraders and fertilizer or chemical plants. The programme suits safety-minded learners with solid math and science who are comfortable with rotating shifts.