March 15, 2007

Focus on O&M (March 2007)

Gamers invited

These challenges may seem insurmountable, but they're not. Consider how power plants have changed to take advantage of the benefits of information technology. Modern combined-cycle plants are much cleaner than the forced-draft coal plants of yesterday. Distributed control systems employ state-of-the-art technology. The calibration of a pressure instrument more closely resembles a "joystick and mouse" process than a physical process like, say, rebuilding a coal pulverizer.

Technology can also help reduce the required number of workers. Pneumatic actuators and motor operators are replacing valve hand wheels and brute force. Monitoring and diagnostic systems can replace outside operators and log-takers. The standardization of systems has reduced demands on workers' skill levels. All of these trends will aid in addressing the staffing challenges facing the utility industry.
 

Renaissance men and women

Standardization and technology also call for a fresh approach to traditional staffing methodologies. One approach is making workers more multiskilled. That can be achieved to varying degrees, from simple cross-training to full-blown multicrafting. Simple cross-training develops several different 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 uses true multicraft technicians—trained on electrical, mechanical, and instrumentation and control systems as well as operations—at its combined- and simple-cycle facilities.

This approach has several advantages. One is reduced 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 multiskilled 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 multicrafting, all technical staffers have some familiarity with many disciplines, so they can contribute to problem-solving in any area.
 

Implementing the concept

There are managerial challenges associated with multiskilled workforces. Progress Energy uses a "jack of all trades, master of one" approach. Familiarity with four trades is required of every technician. Each begins training with at underlying core skill, usually at or near a journeyman level. The goal of his or her training is the ability to handle the day-to-day requirements of the other three skill sets. Defining "day-to-day" correctly is the trick. Set the level of required expertise too high, and management will expect too much and technicians may despair of absorbing the content. Set the bar too low, and you may end up with a bored, underutilized technical staff.

Deploying a multiskilled workforce poses yet another challenge. Technicians naturally seek out job assignments that require their core skill. From management's perspective, that's a good thing because competent technicians work smarter, faster, and better. But a worker who never leaves his or her comfort zone may be unable to do a job involving another skill, if it has atrophied.

The final managerial challenge is picking the right curriculum for a training program. Don't worry if your first choice of courses doesn't produce the desired results. The curriculum can be adjusted over time to reflect changes in task frequency and equipment.
 

Becoming lean and mean

The key advantage of the multicraft workforce is that it allows a plant to be run by fewer people. Where the traditional, apprentice approach to staffing assumes a peak workload for each skilled staffer, the multicraft approach requires peak workload staffing levels for the entire site. That's easier to achieve in practice because the journeyman electrician and the apprentice mechanic are the same person. And by including operations in the skill set, problems of workforce utilization during busy periods are lessened because any technician is qualified to run the plant.

To recap, the multicrafted workforce concept addresses three major consequences of our aging workforce. Operating lean and mean minimizes short-term and legacy staffing costs. Requiring each technician to be multiskilled mitigates the "knowledge silo" effect that has plagued the industry since baby boomers began retiring. And multicrafting makes a potential shortage of qualified workers in the future much less of a concern.

—Contributed by Tony Wiseman, lead craft technical trainer for Combustion Turbine Operations at Progress Energy. He can be reached at 919-812-4988 or anthony.wiseman@pgnmail.com.