National Grid Trip
Students report on a trip to the National Grid training centre in Oldham
The training centre in Oldham was very interesting and cold, with safety being promoted everywhere on the site. The day opened up a wide range of career opportunities and showed how important gas is in keeping the country running. We started the day getting kitted out with safety boots, goggles and overalls and then we went onto the site to see the fire pad demonstration. Here we watched a demonstration on how to put out a gas fire – we got to see the strength of a fire, when the gas pressure was only at 2 bar which is only 20% of the original pressure when it pumped from other storage facilities. We got to see how National Grid engineers deal with fires started from different flammable substances and the different ways that fires can be extinguished.
Next in the workshops we had to replace an emergency valve (EVC). We spent about 10 minutes seeing it done and then trying it ourselves. After being shown how to fix and change a gas meter, they told us a gas leak had occurred and then it was our turn to step in and solve the problem! We also learnt how to bend copper piping, how to join copper piping using a solder method, how to join “plastic” pipe using electricity to weld the ends and how to detect pipes hidden under floors and walls.