welder

estimator coordinator

JV Driver

Starting from the beginning after you get a call from their recruiter you'll send the necessary documents and complete your drug test. After which you'll receive a welcome package with the info you need. You'll likely get this at the latest possibly moment as most workers here can attest too. You will need to arrange your own flights, they will bus you from Edmonton airport.
Arranging accommodations in remote Cold Lake is challenging because there is a low vacancy rate. Because there is a low vacancy rate this town will gouge you! Expect to pay an average of $1000 for a month of rent and two weeks if your in a hotel. Having a car is ideal as the town has a north end with few amenities and a south end with more options. No public transit and an over priced taxi service. (Avg. $15 one way)
To get to the site you will catch a bus at approx 5:30am every morning. The commute is 1 hour, each way and unpaid. You'll arrive on site half an hour early (6:30am) you will not get paid until 7am. The bus leaves the site at 6pm. You can expect to get back in town for 7pm.
If you like to get a decent sleep you'll have a couple hours of down time. In which you'll be spending it eating, getting cleaned up and preparing or the next day.
The job site is disorganized, most things are a battle, very few materials, even fewer tools. The tool crib is under stocked! Foreman's are good guys and are dealing with lack of communication and work for their crews from management. Management is extremely poor here. There is very little respect for the troops on the ground. They implement changes that make things harder for everyone with little to no warning. Turnover is high here and lots of good workers are leaving. The work for some trades is nearly finished. Carpenters may have work into June.
Safety is mostly rhetoric, and is in place to protect the company, not the employee. Safety meetings are ineffective and all though there may be good ideas, there is no implementation.
On average the pay is pretty good. On a 5 day cheque it's approx $2500, 7 day cheque $3000 and a 2 day is $800. These are approximates and take home numbers. Factor in living expenses. Travel and loa is included in those numbers.
The union (if you can call it that) is useless and does little to nothing to help you here.
JV must have payed to receive a 50 Best managed company designation, or it's a typo, or its an expired stamp. Very poorly organized, very poorly managed.

Every morning we fill out JHA and go through our tool box meeting with all crew members. We evaluate each job then begin to start our work routine. I have learned more then I can put into words with JVD, I hope on there future jobs ill be able to be apart of the team and keep learning from them and my fellow coworkers. Hardest part of the job would be lack of communication and diligence between forman and there crew members when small issues keep occurring. Example. (Some crew members not sorting through there garbage and metal then leaving it for other JVD staff to deal with on a continues basis. When we the workers tell the formans and not see them make a better effort into telling there crew it makes our daily tasks more tedious and time consuming when our time could be better well spent. Most enjoyable part of the work environment would be the the family you create here and the fun you have during your work and home time with new friendly people you get to meet.

poor management of human and other resources.

insufficient tools for the number of workers. power and hand tools are notable by their scarcity.

journeyman carpenters doing unskilled labour, labourers don't seem to do anything.

disorganized worksite. flow of materials from one location seems to be at the discretion of workers. eg foreman directs us to " go find some more wood", at which point one starts to wander around asking other crews for their likely looking materials.

security of personal effects is minimal. numerous reports of clothing and boots being discarded while on days off because the individual was thought to have quit, i don't leave anything on site i can't afford to lose.

like many of my coworkers i will take another job as soon as i can.

My only major complaint with this company is the office side. All the on-site personnel, foreman’s and crews were great to work with. Any communication with the office side specifically HR, was non-existent. Emails ignored, voicemails ignored, even before the covid outbreak. You would have to go to the foreman’s trailer and basically get one of the foreman to advocate for you to HR. Getting the hours filled out in an apprentice record book takes months, if they don’t lose it all together. 
But my major complaint is, in the year since I have left JV Driver, I have received two notifications from them about security breaches to their system. Personal information compromised, full name, full address, phone number, SIN, banking information, email address they probably know my blood type to now. 
Who do they have working in that office?
Even before the cyber attacks I had little to no confidence in the office side of JV driver. 
But now this just reinforces my opinion that the upper management/HR side of the company is at best careless or at the worst completely disorganized and incompetent. 

Worked night shift for JV Driver JACOS job. I had the opportunity working with the best group of guys, everyone worked hard and had fun at the same time. Some of the foremen were awesome too.  Pay was excellent. 

The bad? Night shift General Foreman loves to micro manage the site. He definitely likes to go around getting on everyone's nerves. Sometimes he would give unreasonable deadlines too.  Site office management is a joke. Job security is all about who you know. The best workers get laid off before those lazy workers who know management. 

Overall the company is not bad. Great group of guys and excellent safety culture. However it would be nice to see a change in management next time I work for these guys.

We look after all our craft, book rooms; flights submit timesheets place orders whatever they need ,we look after. I have learned a lot at this job, for me I would say the biggest thing would be if you respect your workers and treat them well they will always come through for you and put in all they have for the company. 
I work with the most amazing crew and have been very lucky to have met the people i have. Management has been great and it is like a family here it will be sad to see the end.
I enjoy working so closely with the craft and I enjoy helping people. It has been a great learning and growing experience and i can't wait to begin a new chapter.

get on the shuttle bus at 5:20 am get to the job site for 6:20am work until 5:30 pm, catch the bus at 6:00 pm get off the bus at 7:00 pm. Only get payed for 10 hours when they take basiclly 14 hours of your day. They give you $120 a day LOA in Cold lake. so you have to live in a skidded out hotel in order to be able to eat half decent. Most of the guys that work on site are pretty good to work with tho. They will be hiring 500-1000 new guys in the next month or 2. There wont be a hotel room to rent for under $100 a night soon. so think about that before you think the LOA is an incentive!

If your good @ anything expect to be stuck doing it until your no longer employed here.

Great place for a apprentice to learn the basics.

The People you work with are amazing and kept me around.

Hardest part I found was Management was poorly organized.
Idea's were stolen if they were even considered and majority of the time that wouldn't even happen.

You have good attendance, they'll never let you go, no matter how many times you mess up.

Daytime shift seemed to be the window dressing,
Night shift was where the work was pushed.

Nice safety incentives such as hat's jackets even a watch if your around long enough.

Odd BBQ/pizza lunch.

average 48hour work weeks

Weekend work was very rare.

I was mostly involved in the companys' lock out program. Responsible for proper isolation of equipment for the safety of everyone on site. I learned a lot about how a copper mine works from an electrical stand point and how to deal with people at all levels of management. The management was a bit poor at times stemming from a lack of foresight and organized planning. All my co-workers were a pleasure to work with. The hardest part of the job was being away from my friends and family for 2 weeks at a time. The most enjoyable part of the job was getting to know all the great people who worked there.

The Managers are so wrapped up in advancing in the company that they wipe their boots on whoever stands in the way. 1 hr. bus ride each way to Cold Lake with no compesation. Safety has nothing to do with employees but with protecting the company. They want production but hire double the men required to do the work and then do not have the material to complete the work, then when it shows up PANIC !!!! 
Lots of potential but have to revisit senior people responsible for the day to day operations.
You don't dare speak up like they ask you to do. My door is always open my buddy, 

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Welder 3 salaries reported	$45.77 per hour
Estimator coordinator 1 salary reported	$100,000 per year

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