Public Power - September/October 2007 - (Page 22)

The University of Northern Iowa is working with utilities in the state to train students for technical careers. Photo courtesy UNI. Training TOMORROW’S WORK FORCE Public power utilities are forming partnerships with community colleges—on campus and online—to ensure a future supply of well-trained workers. Pat Budlar has two words of advice for any public power utility that needs to start replacing workers who will soon retire: Don’t wait. “About a year ago, I told my boss that nine people in my department of 12 were eligible to retire,” said Budlar, the technical training team leader at Nebraska Public Power District. “That raised a flag.” Across the utility industry, roughly one third of the work force is likely to retire in the next five to 10 years. To avoid a knowledge gap, NPPD has begun training workers to fill positions that are not yet vacant. “Instead of backfilling positions, we’re almost prefilling them,” said Budlar. Austin Energy in Texas is taking the same approach. The utility expects 25-30 percent of its work force to retire over the next five years. “We can’t wait until someone retires to hire a replacement,” said Pat Alba, chief administrative officer. Like many other public power utilities, NPPD is addressing the challenge by working with community colleges to provide tomorrow’s work force with the necessary skills and education. Two community colleges in NPPD’s service territory—Northeast Community College and Southeast Community College—offer courses designed to train lineworkers, system operators and other technicians. NPPD human resources staff and operations personnel regularly interview students at these colleges for positions with the utility. 22 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2007 BY ALICE CLAMP In Imperial, Calif., IID Energy and Imperial Valley College have collaborated on an apprenticeship program that embraces seven different trades, from industrial technician to substation electrician. Students in the programs constitute “a great applicant pool,” said Rick Johnson, IID Energy’s training officer. “Our average lineworker is 51 years old. This is one way we’re overcoming the age gap.” Partnership options—Community colleges represent a key training resource for the nation’s public power utilities. And most are receptive to helping to fill the needs of the utility industry’s looming shortage of workers. When Cedar Falls Utilities in Iowa told Hawkeye Community College about the challenge, the college said it would tailor a program for the city. “They wanted to make sure they are providing citizens with good training,” said CFU General Manager Jim Krieg. There’s a good reason for partnerships between municipal utilities and community colleges, he added. “We share the mission of providing service to the community, either through electricity or education.” CFU is exploring two possibilities with Hawkeye. One entails utility internships for full-time Hawkeye students. The other: sending new CFU employees to class one day a week for 14 months. At the end of the course, the employees would receive a certificate in power technology. “We’re trying to create our own experts, by offering a course—in bite size pieces—of everything that has to do with power generation,” said Krieg. California’s Imperial Valley Community College offers 11 classes in its apprenticeship program with IID Energy. All the instructors are journey-level IID Energy employees. Instruction continues in the field, as the apprentice foreman and journey-level workers provide on-the-job training, said Johnson. Sometimes, however, a community college training program is not an option. When the city of Danville, Va., met with representatives of Danville Community College, they agreed there were not enough prospective students to justify the expense of a specialized utility program, said Carlis Wells, the city’s economic development project manager. So the city turned to the Energy Providers Coalition for Education (EPCE), which sponsors online learning programs for the industry. “We wanted to establish a powerline design program that would train entry-level staff to the level of existing staff,” said Wells. He found what the city wanted at Bismarck State College in North Dakota, one of EPCE’s three participating colleges. “We examined Bismarck State College’s power line technology course syllabus, and identified what we needed for our employees,” said Wells. Danville tapped six PUBLIC POWER

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public Power - September/October 2007

Contents Washington Focus 10 Questions Public Power (Every) Week Training Tomorrow’s Work Force What’s in Your Wallet? U.S. Lags in Broadband Deployment Now What? For Engineers Safety Community Broadband For Governing Boards Human Resources Hometown Connections Customer Service DEED Index to Advertisers Advertisers by Category Parting Shot

Public Power - September/October 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.