Industrial & Bridge Painter Training

COATING APPLICATION SPECIALIST (CAS) INTERIM CERTIFICATION PROGRAM (SSPC), allows those in the current workforce the opportunity to realistically achieve certification during the next several years. It focuses directly on the needs of the Application Specialist and provides criteria for the education, training, experience, knowledge, and motor skills required to prepare and apply protective coatings to steel and concrete surfaces of complex industrial and marine structures.

SSPC has long recognized that the industrial painting industry is in need of a comprehensive craft worker training and certification program designed to create a readily available trained and qualified workforce that will meet ever-increasing facility owner demands for quality work completed safely. The industrial painting trade has become a highly technical profession with the introduction of more sophisticated coatings and the need for qualified craft workers is greater than ever.

Union apprenticeships with D.C. 6 are registered, certified and highly regarded career training programs that offer a combination of structured on-the-job training and related technical instruction to train potential trades workers in occupations that demand a high level of skill. D.C. 6 apprenticeships are administered by the cooperative labor-management Joint Apprenticeship Training Fund (J.A.T.F.).

Depending on the trades, apprenticeships can last from three to four years, during which time apprentices work and learn under the direction of experienced journey workers. Over time, apprentices are provided the diversity and complexity of training that leads to becoming highly skilled in their chosen occupations. As they gain skills, they are compensated through an increase in wages.