At the end of May, Kazan hosted the final of the VII National Championship "Young Professionals (WorldSkills Russia)". It became a kind of training ground, where the participants tested all work processes before the upcoming WorldSkills World Championship. Dmitry Ovsov, technical expert of the VII National Championship in the competence "Plumbing and Heating", a regional representative of the German company Viega, talks about the results.
- This year, very serious attention was paid to safety. Russia did an excellent job of organizing the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and it is felt that this experience is being actively applied now. Football fans held a so-called FAN ID. Here, too, all accredited persons had passports. All requests for attending the event went through the online account.
In terms of space, Kazan Expo IEC is just a perfectly prepared site. Convenient infrastructure, everything is divided into sectors, there are separate pavilions for each area of activity. The dimensions of the sites were as close as possible to the submitted requests. There was freedom of space and a very good construction of fences, so that it was convenient for visitors to observe the progress of the competition, and for the participants to work without distraction.
This year we had 14 posts and 2 Live tasks (tasks simulating real life situations). 10 posts are Russian participants, and 4 posts are foreign: from Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Australia and China. International participants are always out of competition. For them, this is training, and for the receiving side, it is prestige, since the preparation and complexity of the Russian assignment are brought up to the level of world requirements and higher.
Even for the representative of Switzerland, one of the Live tasks came as a surprise. During the competition, the participants had to repair the pipeline: cut off the billet of the AHP-pipe of a given length, cut a thread on a special machine, perform a cut-in Viega Megapress Press-In press connection according to the drawing and install a thermometer in it. Then the finished product was installed in the general system and filled with water. So, the Viega Megapress Press-In, which allows you to quickly add additional elements to an already operating pipeline system, turned out to be a novelty for the Swiss.
Undoubtedly, convenience and ease of installation are one of the priority criteria for Viega in the development of any technology. A competent installer will always be able to figure it out and quickly cope with such a task. But the fact remains: the participant from Switzerland did not know about the new Viega development yet. And in Russia, the Viega Megapress Press-In insert has been known since 2016, and there are already a number of objects where this technology has been introduced or incorporated into projects. In general, this is a promising area, especially in the housing and utilities sector.
Also in the Live task a galvanized steel press system from Viega Prestabo was used. It was needed for piping the heating system: for pumping modules and radiators. Balancing the radiator heating system was the final step in this assignment. And since modern professions imply communication with the end consumer, the delivery of the finished work to the customer has become a prerequisite.
Separately, I would like to note the increased level of training of Russian participants. This is largely due to the WorldSkills movement. In practice, we see how the interest in innovative Viega technologies is growing - not only among young professionals, but also among experienced installers. If we compare the results over the past years, then the progress is colossal. Previously, we saw a significant gap between participants from regions and representatives of capitals. Now the top five are holding very close scores. The situation is the same in comparison with international participants. At this championship, Russian participants from the top five showed results corresponding to, and exceeding in a number of skills, world industry standards. Therefore, we can say with confidence that Russia is ready to adequately host the WorldSkills World Championship.
