TRAINING
The web: Ideal for skills development
To power the operations of large industrial customers and keep appliances and equipment humming in homes and businesses, Minnesota Power (MP) employees must collectively perform like a well-oiled machine—24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Perhaps no one at the company knows that better than MP’s operations training administrator, John Batchelder (Figure 1).
A 31-year MP veteran based at the coal-fired Boswell Energy Center, Batchelder cut his teeth on power plant operations in the U.S. Navy. Since then, he’s realized that people naturally take a task-oriented approach to doing their job—sometimes at the expense of understanding how their work affects coworkers. Which is why, he emphasizes, training courses offered to MP employees must include the big-picture fundamentals, including how electricity is generated. “You can’t put the roof on the walls of your career home before you build the foundation,” Batchelder said.
In 2005, MP first offered workers the opportunity to sign up for one of 100 company-paid “seats” for using General Physics Corp.’s GPiLearn portal. Since then, interest in the GP module covering power generation fundamentals has increased substantially. To meet demand, MP doubled the supply of free training seats to 200.
Thanks to efforts led by Batchelder and MP’s training site coordinators—and lots of “customer” feedback—GP training has been augmented by MP-specific training developed in-house. Now employees can tap into 3,200 lesson and testing modules.
MP wrote the job description for Batchelder’s position in 1999. As soon as he got the job, Batchelder began working to improve training opportunities for all Boswell employees. For the next few years, his responsibilities were limited to the plant housing his office. But in 2004, Batchelder’s domain was expanded, to meet VP of Generation Al Hodnik’s goal of enhancing training for employees at all MP plants by December 2005.
Working with his supervisor—Madelen Schuemann, thermal business operations manager for Boswell Units 1 and 2—Batchelder hunkered down to analyze the offerings of web-based training providers. After reviewing the curricula of the vendors he found most impressive—in terms of the price, quality, and applicability of training modules to MP’s future needs—Batchelder recommended going with GP. He was already familiar with the company, having taken some of its training courses in 1998 to prepare for an upgrade of the Boswell plant to a distributed control system.
The three core modules of GP’s Power Plant Operators training curriculum are:
- Power Fundamentals (Figure 2), which gives all kinds of plant workers the theoretical and practical foundation they need. Among its topics are boilers, turbines, combustion basics, ash removal, electrical systems, water treatment, emissions control, and safety.
- Core Skills Development, designed to help generation companies qualify their craft personnel and develop a multiskilled workforce. This module targets several plant personnel categories with subject matter such as instrumentation and control (I&C), electrical and mechanical maintenance, and plant and coal yard operations.
- Advanced Operator Training, for senior technicians. It covers boiler water chemistry, heat rate calculations, and other advanced topics.
To augment the core modules, Batchelder and MP’s training site coordinators worked with GP to develop several levels of training. As employees complete the courses at their own pace, they advance through basic topics like applied math and complex ones like instrumentation. “The training helps them handle their own jobs better,” Batchelder said, “but because they now have power generation basics under their belts, they also have that big-picture view. Instead of just recalibrating an instrument, they know why doing so is so important to overall plant performance.”
Another step that Batchelder took to augment the core modules was to create an I&C training development group, comprising senior I&C personnel from various MP plants. They traveled to each MP plant, spent time discussing its specific I&C training needs with managers, and then created lesson plans germane to each location.
Last year’s offering of free training sparked plenty of employee interest in continuing education. But so did MP’s creation of a new position: apprentice operator. According to Batchelder, “those of us leading the training initiatives noted how many entry-level employees became interested in fuels after that department introduced a fuels technician apprenticeship program. Fuels created the template for our effort to customize employee training levels.”
Batchelder explained that once someone successfully completes an apprenticeship, he or she is immediately certified by Minnesota’s Department of Labor and Industry as an expert at their craft. The certification is recognized by many other states (Figure 3).
That’s the case because everyone who takes a web-based training course must pass a test to prove they’ve retained what they’ve learned. Batchelder said, “The industry-standard passing grade is 70% retention, and that’s MP’s cutoff, too.” If an employee doesn’t pass the test, he or she can take it again. Employees can monitor their progress through the various training levels at any time, as can their supervisors. “MP encourages its employees to avail themselves of free training to reach their short-term goal, whether that goal is to do their current job better or to be promoted,” Batchelder explained.
Do supervisors like the new web-based approach? Absolutely, for several reasons. One is the outpouring of employee interest in continuing education it has produced. For example, Boswell alone currently has 81 people enrolled in training courses. Companywide, 164 employees have registered for some sort of training, and 99% of them are operators or specialists in fuels or I&C.
Another reason the training programs have worked so well is that they are open to everyone. Interested employees don’t even have to work at an MP power plant; all they need is a desire to learn how electricity is generated. Several members of the company’s General Office Building department are in that category.
A third measure of the initiative’s success: Several supervisors have asked Batchelder whether additional training modules could be developed to help their employees get the licenses required for certain MP positions. “The options for reconfiguring training curricula to meet the needs and interests of craft and other workers are almost endless,” Batchelder said. He adds that their supervisors of new MP engineers specializing in various disciplines are very interested in making sure that they receive training in the fundamentals of power production.
Finally, the web-based training program has led to an expanded menu of apprenticeship opportunities, like those for operators and fuels specialists mentioned earlier. Another new apprenticeship that Batchelder helped create is in hydro plant operations, at the behest of hydro operations supervisor Tom Hughes. To get this program up and running, Batchelder and Hughes met with representatives of GP, visited all 11 of MP’s hydroelectric facilities, and then supervised the development of a web-based training curriculum specific to hydro plants.
According to Batchelder, MP is now looking to expand the web-based training initiative while ensuring that employees take courses at the appropriate level. As an example, the company has established a “credentials committee” whose members would include Batchelder, plant production coordinators, unit supervisors and managers, and representatives of Local 31 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.
The committee is responsible for “slotting” employees in courses at the correct level, taking into account their experience and expertise. Workers would have a say in their assignment. As Batchelder explains, “for example, someone who’s been here for 20 years could argue before the committee that they shouldn’t have to take an entry-level course. And if a younger worker brings plenty of computer savvy to the table, he or she would likewise get credit for that. We have a huge workforce transition to prepare for as experienced people retire; plant technology is a lot more complex. That’s another reason training is so important.”
Through GP’s “co-funding” option, MP and two other power companies—Ameren and Colorado Springs Utilities—are subsidizing the creation of more GP training modules. “It’s good for all parties involved,” Batchelder said. “GP can offer more training to all their clients, and the co-funding utilities can get the training they want to develop for their own employees at a lower cost.”
Taking stock of what’s happened over the past year, Batchelder says it’s gratifying to see employees responding to, and wanting to help develop more, training opportunities. “We dropped a pebble into a pond a year ago with GP,” he said, “and it’s just incredible how the ripples have spread.”
—Contributed by Julie Aho of Minnesota Power’s Public Affairs Department.
Email
Comments
Print
Reuse
