Photo courtesy of Mark Kerkaert Marshall native Mark Kerkaert stands next to a tube he replaced and rolled in a fire tube boiler during the BNAP national competition in August, where he finished first.

MARSHALL — Mark Kerkaert, a Marshall native, claimed a national title in the 35th annual Boilermakers National Apprenticeship Program (BNAP).

He currently works for the Boilermakers Local 647, and also won regionals and the team award in the competition with Christopher Lund of Local 107.

Kerkaert joined the Boilermakers Local 647 four years ago, which serves Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and does a multitude of industrial construction and maintenance services on boilers and other large vessels.

“We work on boilers, tanks, pressure vessels, things like that,” Kerkaert said. “We do a lot of welding, rigging … A lot of industrial construction, mostly.”

Kerkaert, still early in his career, earned himself a Boilermaker national title in August, after winning regionals and having stellar performance in several tests.

“At the end of your apprenticeship, they have a competition that they host every year … You first go to the regional competition, and in June I went to the regional competition in Hartford, Connecticut, and I won that one,” Kerkaert said. “The winner and the runner-up from regionals go to nationals. I went to Savannah, Georgia, for Nationals in August. I won the individual, and then won the team, where you’re teamed up with the other person from your region.”

The BNAP was established in 1988, and contestants go through a handful of practical and written tests for both regionals and nationals.

“(We do) kind of everything that they go over in the apprenticeship for Boilermaking (in the competition). There’s rigging, welding, cutting, torch gouging, layout, fabrication. Then some related studies, which would just be book work,” Kerkaert said. “There’s hands-on rigging, and then there’s a written rigging test. Written rigging tests can be calculating loads and weights.”

The team award portion was added in 2000, and awards the highest scoring pair in welding and rigging. Kerkaert won this with Lund.

“For the team, we had to do a team welding and install a Dutchman … Which is replacing a tube in a water wall on a big boiler,” Kerkaert said. “For rigging, we had to move a heat exchanger from one point to the other. They gave us some guidelines that we had to follow, use tuggers and stuff.”

The Apprenticeship program is a four-year training program, which consists of a minimum 576 classroom hours and 6,000 field construction hours. There are 49 written tests throughout the program, which must be achieved with a 70% score or better to be able to move on.

Kerkaert currently resides in Alexandria, but went to Marshall High School, which sparked his initial interest in wanting to get into the industry.

“When I took welding in high school, I also took the class offered through Minnesota West,” Kerkaert said. “That just made me realize that I enjoyed it, and wanted to pursue it.”

The first leap into joining the Boilermakers came right out of college.

“I went to college in Watertown, South Dakota, at Lake Area Tech. I had heard about the Boilermakers when I was going to college, and decided to join,” Kerkaert said. “I’ve been with them now for four years.”

On the brink of officially winning Apprentice of the Year and his title, Kerkaert knew he had what it takes to come out on top.

“I had a good feeling, I was pretty confident that I won and did well. But, before I even went to the regionals and I was just studying, my main goal was to not embarrass our Local,” Kerkaert said. “Regionals went well … When I won, I was pretty blown away. Same feeling for nationals. I was pretty confident, but then hearing it felt good.”