Welding Students Bring ‘Real’ to Life at Dulles Airport

There are a lot of winners in this story: Damon Putman’s welding students at Monroe Technology Center in Leesburg, the firefighters who report to Dulles International Airport for FAA regulated training at the Live Fire Training Center and the taxpayers.

In the 2009-2010 school year, Putman’s students designed, drew, fabricated and installed a flight deck, seats, bulkheads, doors, and overhead storage racks in the training facility’s existing 737 fuselage.

Before that, firefighter trainees pulled their equipment over the wings and dropped directly into the empty 7-foot wide fuselage, Putman said. Now, the firefighting training is much more realistic – maneuver around seats, overhead obstacles and bulkheads – to get to the fire. And now the fire is fed not by a pile of wood, but by propane lines, also manufactured by the students.

The students also created a stand-alone wheel and engine fire prop that simulates engine and landing gear emergencies as well as ground fires – including a wheel fire and three separate fires in the engine housing. Again, fueled by propane from lines built and installed by the students.

Capt. Jason Graber, commander of the fire and rescue unit at Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority at the time, lauded the “quality and professionalism shown by the students,“ on a par, which he wrote in the MWAA newsletter. “On Good Authority", he added, with “any commercially built prop and done at a tremendous savings to the Airports Authority”.

The entire project, Grader wrote, was completed for $9,000. Contracting the project to a commercial firm would have meant a bill of $150,000 or more.

This year, the win-win-win project continues: Welding II students, instructed by Putman, have partnered with the Safety and Training Division of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Fire and Rescue Department to fabricate and assemble a SH-70 Blackhawk helicopter, built entirely out of steel and fueled with propane burners, that will be used to simulate aircraft fires. 

The benefit to MWAA training is “immeasurable,” said Steven Gervis, battalion chief, aafety and training, for MWAA Fire and Rescue. “This brings realism to what we do in the ninth degree.”

Gervis has an FAA requirement to keep all 140 members of MWAA Fire and Rescue up in their training and to reach out to mutual aid departments all over Northern Virginia. For the last 17 years, he said, the resources to do that were “stagnant.”

Now, with the props constructed by the Monroe students, “We have qualitative training that is as realistic as it can get," Gervis said. "No surprises at a real incident. We can train firefighters to the national standard and can now invite people from all over the East Coast to train here.”

The students benefit equally.

“This is a great hands-on experience they will never forget,” Putman said.

Putman graduated from both Loudoun Valley High School and Monroe (then known as the Vocational School), spent six and a half years in the Navy and has been teaching welding for 20 years at his alma mater.

“It’s not the cleanest or funnest job in the world,” he said, “but I enjoy it.”

Putnam added that he places all his graduates.

“I can place an 18-year-old graduate of this class in a job that pays $25 to $35 an hour," he said, adding that Jack Moore, a graduate who worked last year on the MWAA projects, has already started his own company. "We are bringing welders in from China to do infrastructure work because we don’t have enough."

To learn more about students at Monroe Technology Center visit the school online or call 571-252-2080.