This post was authored by Paul Dunn, vice president of sales at MAVERICK Technologies.
Recently, a customer of mine who resides on the Gulf Coast (but is not an oil & gas or petrochemical company) approached me with a very interesting problem. He had lost all of his process engineers to other companies over the past three months, taking all of his process and control system knowledge with them. The company pay and benefits had been attractive enough to retain employees for years, but there has been quite a sudden sea change and he was at a loss on how to deal with it. He told me of his plans to hire or contract three engineers to replace what he had lost. Once we discussed it, I left him with a question that shook him to the core: “How will you keep the new engineers, once they become functional, from leaving you for greener pastures?”
We are just now beginning to see the resource impact of one of the most under-reported stories in the history of the United States. Several major news outlets have reported that the U.S. would become the largest producer of oil in the world. This has been accompanied by the massive reserves of natural gas that are being tapped throughout the country, making the U.S. the low cost producer of oil and gas derivative products for years to come. This is resulting in a staggering amount of investment by most of the major petrochemical and oil & gas companies (PCOGs) in new capital projects; either in new production facilities or with retrofits of existing facilities. The latest capital project investment in the Middle East region is listed at $2 trillion (yes, with a “T”). The latest figures for investment here at home is projected (probably underestimated) at over $200 billion. That investment is expected to grow as more of the reserves get tapped and are added to distribution and manufacturing chains over the next 20 years.
The elephant in the room is that the companies associated with this industry are going to continue to seek out and hire as many experienced control resources as possible. Demand has been ratcheted up to a level that we have not seen in decades. This coincides with the impending decline in experienced controls engineering and technician resources, where we are estimated to lose 40 percent of the workforce to retirement over the next five years. Our engineering schools are not replacing these people fast enough. This is a classic supply/demand curve issue, driving the compensation scale up to an area that non-PCOGs will not be able to afford.
PCOGs see other companies as the breeding ground for acquiring talent. For the most part, this phenomena has been located primarily on the Gulf Coast, but as resources become more scarce, it is spreading. Another customer just contacted me worried about finding resources in the Northern Georgia region of the country. All of their old standbys had disappeared and were otherwise occupied.
Non-PCOGs are going to need to start thinking differently about how they will be able to support their operations from a controls viewpoint. A combination of tried-and-true practices and new and perhaps radical ideas about how to perform controls support may need to be considered, including:
About the Author
Paul has more than 25 years of experience in automation engineering and business development. Before MAVERICK, Paul spent five years as a business development manager for Tegron, and five years as an engineering manager at NASA Glenn Research Center. He earned his bachelor‘s degree in electrical engineering at the University of Dayton and received his MBA from Cleveland State University.