Aging Electric Utility Workforce – Challenge and Opportunity

We are in the midst of a perfect storm with respect to the electric utility workforce:

• A review of electric utilities’ staffing within North America reveal that 35 to 50 percent of workforce performing critical maintenance, operations, and engineering functions are likely to retire or leave the industry within the next 5 years.
• A significant percentage of the North American electric grid is aged, operating well-beyond its economic and design life; and with the imposition of severe capital spending constraints and mounting pressure to operating within shrinking O&M cost budgets, the intellectual capital represented by these more experienced personnel is critical to sustaining electric system reliability.
• The absence of well-documented practices and processes further exacerbates the impact of this impending exodus of experienced people, particularly given the reality that the success of the emerging technologies around electric system automation (e.g. smart grid, AMI, and T&D automation) will depend largely on the health and condition of the traditional electric system infrastructure.
• And, as if merely replacing personnel on a like-for-like basis and capturing their collective knowledge is not enough of a challenge, the emergence of new electric system technologies and their convergence with communications and computing applications calls for the development, through training and / or recruitment of an entirely new skill set to effectively design, operate and maintain the systems.

Converting Challenges to Opportunities

The challenges inherent in these factors can appear daunting and perhaps even cause for a certain amount of pessimism regarding the electric industry’s ability to meet the expectations of their external stakeholders. Or, these challenges can be used as an impetus for:

• Instituting practices that should have already been in place, and
• Developing strategies to revitalize the electric system backbone in conjunction with a comprehensive grid modernization plan.

There are a number of initiatives already being initiated in the industry to successfully navigate through the convergence of anticipated turnover of a significant percentage of the electric utility workforce, increased reliance on experience to maintain the electric system as it is currently constructed, and the emergence of a 21^st century grid. The following provides a representative cross-section of initiatives to be considered:

• Rebrand the industry acknowledging the perspective of the emerging young workforce. The enrollment of college students in engineering fields related to the electric industry is certainly on the rise, the need for these same type of individuals across all industries will more than triple to projected gap for electric utilities. The fact of the matter is the electric industry is competing with the more attractive entities related to telecommunications and e-commerce; and needs to reshape its identity to be more in line with what excites the younger generation.
• Dependent somewhat on the previous point, the electric utilities, working with other local and federal entities, need to create incentives for the universities to develop power engineering programs. There are currently less than five strong programs within the U.S.; which obviously impacts the size of the pipeline or on the backend creates a significant training challenge for the prospective new hire.
• In-house apprenticeship and / or education cooperative programs have proven effective in attracting new hires at levels that can be accommodated by seemingly tight budgets, while ensuring some degree of certainty that the participants will transition to productive employees.
• Knowledge capture programs, designed to address the exodus of a significant amount of intellectual capital, heretofore categorized as a luxury, can now be justified on the basis of tangible benefits and risks to the business.
• Effective Asset Management programs play a key role, as the departure of individuals to perform basic maintenance activities in the absence of well-documented programs that address the location, condition and criticality of electric system assets, require accurate asset registers and well-conceived maintenance programs.

These and other initiatives do require investments that to date, have not been made; but have now reached the status of “critical to the success of the electric industry.” Recognizing the variances across the states and provinces with respect to economics and regulatory focus, and the pressures of dealing with Wall Street for the investor-owned utilities, success in addressing these challenges will require well-conceived and articulated strategies, more-holistic approaches in identifying and capturing benefits, and a more effective communication and outreach plan to all external stakeholders. This equates to additional competencies beyond those required to operate the core business as well as a shift in philosophy in how to best deal with these stakeholders. And though these are not easy steps to take, the stakes are high and the challenges are imminent.