Saskatoon, Saskatchewan — Saskatchewan Polytechnic will host another BETAG Outer Panel Repair Specialist (OPRS) course at its Saskatoon campus from April 3 to June 23, the institution told attendees at the recent Saskatchewan Association of Automotive Repairers event.
The only school in North America to offer the program, BETAG’s OPRS course is offered through Sask Polytech designed to help collision centres repair more parts rather than replace them, driving production and throughput by increasing a technician’s capability and efficiency.
At SAAR’s Spring Conference, Sask Polytech’s Scott Kucharyshen informed the industry of just a few of the course benefits. Kucharyshen showed an image of a cab corner on a Dodge truck that took a rear-end hit, resulting in box contact in the cabin.
“How many of you would have your A-tech or experienced journeyman working on this?” he asked the audience. “What about a Level 4 apprentice? Level 3? Level 2? Level 1?”
The audience mostly agreed that Level 4 apprentices or journeypersons would be equipped to handle the job.
“With BETAG, though, we can do this with a Level 2 apprentice; we didn’t remove any interior aside from a lower interior trim panel.
“What wages are you paying a journeyman? What are you paying a Level 2?”
Kucharyshen said he had the repair order slated for a cab corner section; a Level 3 repair. With no frame damage, the crew replaced the box, replaced the bumper, fixed the cab and blended the door—it was done in Level 2.”
“Right now, we have Level 1 apprentices fixing panels that were, before, a challenging Level 2. Talk about raising your staff, challenging them and making them more productive members of your team.”
So far, Sask Polytech has run one class, with the second currently running.
“They’ve done their first week and they’re back working in the shop. How it works—It’s about one to two hours per week, where you take pictures and send them to us. They’ll come in for their second session the week after next, and they’ll do this back and forth for about four cycles over four months.”
Sask Polytech is also planning to run two courses in Regina this fall, so long as they are able to fill the spots.
“If we’re going to run classes in Regina, we need 16 techs per course. If we can get that, we’ll move all the equipment down to Regina and keep them down there to train in the fall.”
According to BETAG, there are government grants available that will cover up to 66 percent of the program cost.
Students interested in participating in the program can contact Jeremy Shaw at 306-659-4073.
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