Labor Resources for Utility Managers

  1. Service And Conservation Programs Can Lead To Infrastructure Careers 7/20/2022

    Funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is starting to flow across the country, accelerating thousands of transportation, water, energy, and other projects. But those are just the beginning of the $860 billion in investments over the coming years that will reach transportation departments, water utilities, and other infrastructure owners and operators at a state and local level.

  2. 3 Ways You Shouldn't Save On Maintenance Operating Costs 7/14/2022

    No matter what industry you work in, you'll always be looking for ways to reduce your costs and keep maintenance as reasonably priced as possible. There's always so much you'll need to be paying for though, such as parts, labor, energy, vendor costs, and more. Of course, you'll be looking to keep those costs down.

  3. Protecting Personnel And Plant With Facility Siting 6/23/2022

    Process industry history is sprinkled with catastrophic incidents that acted as drivers of regulatory change, such as the 1974 Flixborough explosion, the 1984 Bhopal toxic release disaster, and the 2005 Texas City Refinery flammable material release and explosion. Lack of process safety management, damage, and deaths were the commonalities among these incidents. The OSHA Process Safety Management (PSM) Standard and EPA Risk Management Plan (RMP) regulations were promulgated in response to these types of devastating accidents.

  4. WWEMA Window: Challenges For The Construction Market In The Water Industry 6/16/2022

    I have been in the water industry since 1981 and have seen a few ups and downs in the economy that were created by fuel shortages, wars, labor shortages, inflation, etc. This is the first time I have seen the impacts on the economy that were caused by several of the aforementioned occurring all at once.

  5. Lean Techniques Can Help Improve Water and Wastewater Operations 5/5/2022

    All the rage in the private sector, ‘lean’ principles — smoothing out processes to remove non-value-add parts — can also bring greater efficiency to utility operations.

  6. The Labor Shortage: Examining The What, Why, And How Behind An Ever-Growing Problem 5/4/2022

    Dr. Rachel Sederberg didn’t mince words when describing the seriousness of the labor shortage in the United States. It’s long been a problem, and now it’s getting (much) worse. When the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in February of 2020, there were 7 million job openings and 5.9 million unemployed people in the U.S. Two years into the pandemic, the statistics paint a dire picture of the workforce landscape as it stands presently.

  7. It's Time To Put Water On The Main Stage 5/3/2022

    During the pandemic, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released the 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. Of the 17 categories, three were dedicated to water. Drinking Water, Stormwater, and Wastewater received grades of C-, D, and D+, respectively. ASCE’s accompanying Failure to Act study summarized that by 2029, funding for the three combined categories needed to be $1.045 trillion. As a reminder, $611 billion is currently funded, leaving a gap of $434 billion. The recent Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) helped that gap a little more, with $55 billion in funding. Unfortunately, that still leaves a gap of $379 billion in additional funding needed by 2029.

  8. Can Electronic O&M Manuals Beat The Water Industry's Brain Drain? 4/6/2022

    Water industry brain drain is here. As of last year, half of U.S. adults aged 55 or older had retired, according to Pew Research Center. Furthermore, by 2030, the Water Environment Federation predicts that a third of the water workforce will be retirement eligible.

  9. Reflections Of A Global Civil Engineer And Candidate For ASCE Utility Engineering & Surveying Institute (UESI) Governor 3/30/2022

    ASCE has been a premier civil engineering body for over 170 years when we were compelled to design civil structures strong enough to survive new threats — two world wars, seismic loads, floods, environmental pollution, and epidemics, to name a few. We have been fortunate that we had the trust of the public behind us in our pursuits. When a sewer line is designed and built in town, during the unveiling of the sewer no member of the public would ever dare to ask, “What is the return on the public investment into the new sewer?”

  10. WWEMA Window: What Does Volatility Mean To You? 3/23/2022

    Almost two years ago to the day, I contributed my first article after achieving the honor of joining the WWEMA Board of Directors. At that time, I could say I’d seen a lot in my 25-plus years in the workforce and was at a point in my career where I found myself thinking, but not saying out loud, “I’ve seen this before” with a bit more regularity.