Size vs. smarts
At their 62 plants, respondents reported a total of 1,034 full-time equivalent (FTE) positions on plant engineering and/or technical staff. Of those FTEs, there were actually 958 functional positions. Figure 1 breaks down that number in each of three categories: the staffer's education, his or her department, and the type of organization to which the staffer belongs. As one might expect, close to two-thirds of the E&T positions are held by engineers with four-year degrees.
1. Functional engineering and technical positions by education (blue), department (green), and organizational type (yellow). Source: EUCG
2. Staff size and education vs. plant unit count. Source: EUCG
3. Staff size and education vs. plant size. Source: EUCG
The detailed plant E&T benchmarking study drills even deeper into the data. Available plots delineate staff characteristics by individual utility (which are assigned a code number, rather than named), by plants with three and four units, and by the level of labor-intensive activity (such as the care and feeding of an FGD or SCR system) at a plant. Remember, only by participating in the study can you gain access to all the raw data you'll need to benchmark yourself against your closest peers.
Plant 911
Some plant organizations are fully self-contained and have the expertise and experience to handle routine maintenance and overhauls. Others have pulled those resources into a central E&T organization from which subject matter experts (SME) can advise the entire fleet. The rationale for centralization may be cost savings, the desire to standardize business processes, or a response to the well-documented aging of the utility workforce, which continues to take its toll on the supply of SMEs.
Geographic allocation of technical resources is now fairly common at larger utilities. For some with a very large service territory, the hierarchy may even have another level: regional E&T organizations dedicated to specific plants. Across all types of organization, 71% of respondents said they have "robust" centralized or regional technical resources to call on, while 27% said their access to these resources is limited.
Plant-level E&T organizations, especially those serving plants with multiple units, tend to have more specialists than plants of lower rating and unit count. In fact, the study population reported that 65% of their E&T staffs are organized around plant systems vs. only 19% around a specific unit. Only 16% answered "other" to the question of support responsibility, meaning that their E&T organization probably handles problems on a plantwide basis.
Comments from the "other" category included "all personnel support all units and systems, as required," "work on the entire plant," and "structured to support plant equipment, systems, and projects." Taken as a whole, these results and comments suggest that the U.S. electric utility industry may now be pushing E&T talent to become specialists rather than generalists, as was the case a generation ago.
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