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GDA’s intensives are a jumpstart to earning family-sustaining wages in a pioneering career that includes teamwork, physical and mental toughness, and supporting your community's economic and energy resilience.  

The GDA Intensive is a fulltime, in-person certificate program spanning two weeks (80 hours), with successful completion yielding a listing in GDA’s database of trained candidates and possible placement into a paid apprenticeship. Our pre-apprentice intensive blends classroom time with hands-on drilling labs:  

• Introduction to the science behind geothermal boreholes and loop fields  
• The roles, requirements, and fundamentals of drilling boreholes  
• Drilling disciplines and how they react to different subsurface conditions  
• The lifecycle of the drilling process, from a single borehole to an entire borefield  
• By the end of program, you will have discussed workplace protocol and safety and shadowed the drilling of geothermal boreholes to completion 

Note: Being a driller involves working outdoors and attention to complexity and risks, and requires being 18 years or older, a driver's license, and usually having your own vehicle.