Beyond the Classroom: Electrical Safety Where It Matters Most
He began his career in the electrical trade by engaging in construction activities at a potash mine located west of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Since then, he has accumulated experience in various facets of the electrical trade, including construction, commissioning, and maintenance.
Beyond the Classroom: Electrical Safety Where It Matters Most
I’ve spent most of my career in places where things go loud, hot, and fast. Commissioning a new system. Ripping into a shutdown. Sorting out the mess left behind when something fails in a way no one saw coming.
We like to think those moments are rare. But anyone who's worked a few shutdowns knows: it's not about if it’ll go sideways—it’s about when, and how ready you are when it does.
At Canada Training Group, most folks know us for the training—we’ve earned that reputation. But more and more, we're getting called for something different. We’re being asked to step into the field, shoulder to shoulder with crews, to make sure the right decisions are being made before they become failures.
That’s what our Major Projects division is all about.
New builds, big upgrades, tight shutdowns—they all come with pressure. Budget pressure. Production pressure. Contractor pressure. And right in the middle of it all are electrical systems that can’t afford to be rushed.
We’ve seen equipment installed wrong because the drawings were out of sync. We’ve seen breakers fail because no one was tracking test histories. And we’ve seen near misses turn into full-blown arc flash events because the right questions weren’t asked early enough.
The common thread? These weren’t training gaps. They were execution gaps. Gaps in oversight. Gaps in experience. Gaps in real-time support when decisions had to be made on the fly.
When we support a Major Project, we're not clipboard managers. We're not there to play Monday morning quarterback either.
We're there on the floor, with the team, validating engineering logic, catching design conflicts, coaching trades, managing safety-critical commissioning steps, and jumping on failure investigations before they spread.
We mentor the folks doing the work. We help engineers make field-smart decisions. We protect timelines by protecting reliability. And when something breaks, we don’t guess—we diagnose.
We bring the same mindset we teach in class—procedural discipline, analytical thinking, risk control—and we apply it in real time, in real environments, with real consequences.
If you’re managing a major capital project, it’s easy to assume everything’s covered: contractors have experience, the engineering firm signed off, the manufacturer did a FAT.
But we’ve learned over the years: none of that means the job is safe. It just means the paperwork is clean.
Having a trusted electrical partner on-site—one who knows what should happen and what usually happens—can be the difference between a successful startup and a two-week finger-pointing session after the lights don’t come on.
And let’s be honest: the insurance policy that matters most isn’t on paper—it’s the one wearing steel toes, asking the hard questions, and making sure no one’s cutting corners when it counts.
Whether it’s a commissioning nightmare waiting to happen, or a shutdown too tight for guessing games, we’re ready to step in and bring clarity to chaos.
Because training doesn’t stop when the course ends. And safety doesn’t wait until the system’s live.
We’re not just here to teach—we’re here to get it done right.
Just my thoughts
Stay Safe
Norm
