Around 700,000 tradespeople are expected to retire by 2028 and our young people are not going into the trades at a rate high enough to replace an older generation of retiring workers, creating a shortfall that will only deepen Canada’s cost of living crisis. Stigma around blue-collar work and concerns about workplace safety have discouraged younger generations from entering these professions.

The lack of qualified welders, plumbers, and electricians is not just an inconvenience: it stymies the development of housing, transportation, and energy infrastructure. In 2022, small Canadian firms lost $38 billion in business opportunities from labour shortages, with the construction sector shouldering most of the losses. Yet these trades, welding in particular, require precision, creativity, and skill. They are dangerous crafts that sit at the intersection of science and art. 

My business partner Reza Abdollahi wanted to solve the issue of labourers having to perform dangerous welds and the related labour shortage when we founded our company, Novarc Technologies, in 2013. While I had a background in control system design and industrial automation, Reza had built his career in arc welding, automation, and robotics. Through consultations with industry experts, we created a robotic welding system, the world’s first collaborative welding robot, or “cobot”—the first of its kind in pipe welding applications. We called it the spool welding robot, or SWR. 

Collaboration between cobots and humans is the key to making trades work faster, cleaner, and safer, without compromising quality or replacing the expertise of experienced and highly skilled welders. With them, employees can undertake more complicated tasks and, one day, will be expected to supervise the quality of the cobot’s work. For example, employees would supervise the quality of the alignment of metal pieces prior to a weld, referred to as a fit-up, which can determine the quality and strength of a weld. 

One of our clients told us of a welder they employed who, over the span of their career, had completed many impressive welds but no longer had the hand dexterity to do the welds himself, so they had him supervise one of our robots. Integrating robots into the work environment is also beneficial for workers who aren’t limited by injury. Trades like welding come with many risks, from skin and eye exposure, to the welding arc—the bright, hot plasma able to generate the intense heat needed to weld two pieces of metal together. When you automate welding jobs, workers are less likely to come into contact with UV light, risk serious burns or inhale toxic fumes. Simultaneously, automating repetitive welds will give workers the time to hone their craft and focus on more complex, strategic and creative tasks. 

Companies can use cobots to increase productivity, become more competitive, and respect their social responsibility towards their employees. One of our clients, Seaspan Shipyards, who installed our spool welding robots in both their Vancouver and Victoria drydocks to complete the shipyard’s Ballast Water Treatment System upgrade, was able to drastically improve their productivity by automating their spool welding process. With the SWR, welders at Vancouver drydock—where workers repair incoming ships—were able to generate pipe joints in about an average of 40 minutes; a job that used to take four and a half hours. Our company has more than 118 units in operation around the world, which have been sold to mechanical contractors in various industries, including oil, energy and construction. 

With robot operation training, operators would not have to be as highly skilled as the current generation of welders, making it easier for new recruits to meet the demand for labour. But a new generation entering trades schools will still have to learn welding to ensure quality. Trade teaching programs should be integrating robotics and automation into their curriculum. 

The British Columbia Institute of Technology has already started to teach students in its welding and metal fabrication programs how to work with cobots. This will prepare students for a modernized industry dealing with shortages while having the added benefit of attracting students who wouldn’t have considered a trades job due to health risks or the strain of the work. Young people are also much more familiar with user interfaces, making the work straightforward and intuitive. 

Our clients are excited for the technologies we’ve developed since our founding and for the products we have lined up for the future. Most recently, AI has allowed us to create applications that greatly improve the SWR’s perception and allows it to spot variations and react in real time. We are also starting to use AI to power vision technology for our robots, to help the people using them see what they’re working on. It’s now easier than ever for workers to monitor the welding process so that they can trace it back to the quality of each weld, modify the process if necessary, and ensure the quality of their welds for their own clients for years to come. 

Cobots like ours offer us a chance to increase productivity, speed up timeline, and improve working conditions, all without compromising on quality. But we can only do that by working with tradespeople to capitalize on the knowledge and experience they have built up over decades. 

—As told to Marta Anielska