Marine technician trade evolving

OS Vandersleyen (centre) and OS Charest (right) are joined by Cdr Sauvé, Commanding Officer of the Naval Training Development Center (Pacific), shown here investigating a defective diaphragm valve.

Selena Benard, NTDC(P) ~

In 2017, the Royal Canadian Navy stood up the Marine Technician trade.

This new trade replaced the legacy trades of Marine Engineer, Hull Technician and Electrical Technician.

The vision for the Marine Technician trade is to train ­sailors to be capable and flexible in an ever-evolving technological environment. Given the emerging technologies such as electric drive ships, changing power generation technology, and even composite hulls, the old divisions between trades were breaking down at an ever-greater rate.

Marine Technicians are being trained as generalist technicians across a broad swathe of machinery, skills and capabilities. This allows members of a ship’s Marine Systems Engineering department to be capable in all aspects of the operation of the ship’s equipment. No matter which ship class a Marine Technician is assigned to, they will have the knowledge needed to operate the equipment on board, be it electrical, mechanical or even physical repairs to the ship’s structure.

The new organization of Naval Personnel and Training Group has created Training Development Centres (Pacific) and (Atlantic). On the West Coast, the Training Development Centre is tasked as the Curriculum Control Authority to oversee and plan for the development of all MARTECH training and education.

As new technologies mature and become available and deployed on Royal Canadian Navy platforms, the training will be updated to match, keeping personnel flexible and ready to deploy on any platform.