Power Industry to Face Major Shortage in Qualified Personnel

---

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The Power Industry infrastructure is growing old. Transmission and distribution systems are being pushed to capacity; new power plants are going online faster — all the while being met with disapproval from opponents whether for site issues, emissions concerns, noise or the loss of property values. The nation's older power plants are having their lives extended and upgraded by companies not wanting to accrue a large capital expense to build a plant. And soon, these systems' most important asset — seasoned personnel who have operated power production and transmission facilities for the past 25 or more years — will leave in record numbers by 2012.

The power production industry is predicted to have a major shortage of qualified personnel over the next 10 years, but the industry is expected to grow by 45% in the next 15 to 20 years. According to the latest statistics, the average age of the Power Industry's workforce is 50 years, and most have been with their respective companies for at least 20 years, making them eligible for retirement. About 30% of the industry's workforce is eligible to retire in five years, and 50% will be eligible in 10 years. U.S. government statistics show that about 47,000 people employed in power-production and 400,000 in the electric utility industry.

The Platte River Power Authority, an electric utility in Fort Collins, Colorado, was surprised to see that in a 2003 survey, 40% of its 200 employees said they planned to retire within five years. This eye-opening trend will occur all over the country, and most utilities will not be prepared.

Click on the image to view plant start-ups scheduled from 2008-12 with employee counts.

In the '90s, utilities expecting more competition after deregulation initiated a hiring freeze and cut their workforce by 25% mostly through attrition. At the same time, universities realizing that fewer students were interested in pursuing employment in the generation industry cut their power engineering courses, a subfield of electrical engineering, in favor of computer-related fields of study. Academia historically graduated 2,000 power engineers a year, but in the '90s, that changed in favor of computer science degrees, especially during the dot-com era. Universities now only graduate about 500 power engineers annually. The loss of so many workers — blue collar and white collar — as well as the decreasing number of people who enter the industry are some of the most difficult problems in terms of reliability.

One approach the industry has implemented is to train workers to become competent in more then one skill by either cross-training or multi-crafting. Cross-training develops several skill sets that require similar types and levels of knowledge. Graduates are "operator/mechanics" or "I&C/electricians," and their combined skills improve staffing flexibility. Progress Energy's combustion turbine operations use true multi-craft technicians — trained on electrical, mechanical, and instrumentation and control systems, as well as operations.

This approach reduces development costs for craft workers. The skill sets required for electricians, I&C technicians, mechanics, and operators overlap nearly 60%. It is much less expensive to raise the level of cross-trained workers' skills than to develop individuals from scratch, as in the traditional apprentice-to-journeyman model.

Another advantage of a multi-skilled workforce is that it usually makes work more collaborative. In the apprentice model, the technician with a specialty will naturally take the lead on a job involving that discipline. But with multi-crafting, all technical staffers have some familiarity with many disciplines, so they can contribute to problem-solving in any area.

But this begs the question of what to pay a multi-skilled technician. The cost of training and paying an employee who is skilled in several disciplines is much more than it would be for one who has mastered only one. If compensation is not perceived as fair, the now trained and qualified multi-skilled employee will take his or her training elsewhere.

How to recruit, develop and retain qualified employees in a tight job market while maintaining system reliability in a growing industry over the long haul remains to be seen.

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) provides marketing communication services ranging from industrial database solutions to market forecasting, custom analytics, and specialty promotions that support high-level image campaigns.