At this year’s GITA conference there were a few themes that stood out and differentiated this year from previous years, open source geospatial for utilities, the challenge of the aging workforce, and smart grid.

Aging workforce

The aging workforce issue is affecting many of the world’s advanced economies.  In Japan the population is decreasing, in others such as the US the participation rate is declining, but whatever the cause, utilities and telcos are concerned about finding the engineers and skilled staff to design, build, and manage the next generation of infrastructure networks. 

At GITA this year Mark Carpenter of Oncor gave an Opening Session Executive Vision presentation, which I found to be one of the best elucidations of the very serious workforce situation that utilities are facing.

Oncor operates the largest distribution and transmission system in Texas, supplying three million homes and businesses and operating 117,000 miles of distribution and transmission lines. 

With an average age of 45, Oncor has a relatively youthful workforce compared to other North American utiltiies.  But average age doesn’t convey the whole story.  The workforce is really comprised of two cohorts, best exemplified by looking at Oncor’s 122 professional engineers, whose average age is a rather youthful 39.  The engineers are grouped in two age clusters with very different levels of experience;  62 engineers average between 25 and 30 years of experience, and the remaining 70 engineers average about 2.5 years of experience.  In other words there are very experienced engineers most of whom are soon to retire, and very inexperienced young engineers.  Over the next 13 years 1,600 (about 42%) of Oncor’s 3810 employees will reach Oncor’s average retirement age of 60, an average of 120 per year.

I suspect that Oncor is better off in this respect than other North American utilities where the average age is closer to 60 and where 45% of engineers in the electrical power industry will be eligible to retire by 2014.  Also worrisome is that the universities who will train future engineers are also facing an aging workforce challenge – some 50 senior faculty members of the 170 engineering faculty working full‐time in power engineering will be eligible to retire in the same period.