Petrochemical

Petrochemicals Workforce
Development
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Introduction
The North American petrochemical industry can be said to be currently
enjoying something of a renaissance. With natural gas prices currently
low, and looking set to remain that way due to abundant domestic
shale supply, companies and investors are putting up billions of dollars
for construction, expansion and export projects across the US and
Canada.
One real hotspot for such activity can be found on the Gulf Coast, with
Texas and Louisiana seeing a massive increase in investment. The result
of this boom, however, is that in Louisiana alone, tens of thousands
of skilled craftspeople will be needed to complete current and future
projects and there may not be enough trained manpower available
to fill those roles. The industry is also faced with an ageing workforce
the majority of the workforce, in fact, will be nearing retirement age
over the next decade.
In order to make sure that this current gap does not turn into a future
shortage, then, it will be necessary to recruit and train a huge number
of people both on the Gulf Coast and across the country as a whole.
There is still work to be done to ensure that this can happen, however.
Industry needs to work in tandem with educators and government to
make sure that new entrants get the basic training they need. But again,
in order for that to happen, the requisite number of people must be
convinced that a career as a pipefitter or welder is a worthwhile choice
to make something that in the past has perhaps not been easy.
Here, we talked to five industry players who gave us their opinions on
the future of workforce development for the petrochemicals industry.
Speaking from a variety of perspectives, from industry to government
and education, they explain the challenges faced by companies looking
to recruit for new projects over the coming years, and how they believe
a critical shortage of trained workers can be avoided. They also tell us
what work remains to be done, give us some examples of current best
practice, and provide insight into what they think the future holds for
the industry and its workforce as the current boom continues.
Petrochemical Workforce
Development 2015
Conference & Exhibition
April 28-29 | Double Tree
Greenway Plaza, Houston, USA
Putting Petrochemical
Workforce Development Center
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Curt Eysink is executive director of the Louisiana Workforce

Commission (LWC), which works to help make Louisiana the best state
to get a job or grow a business. He was appointed to this position in
July 2009, having previously served as chief of staff and press secretary.
Before joining LWC, he served as director of marketing for Louisiana
Health Care Review Inc., and as city editor of The Advocate newspaper in Baton Rouge. He holds a bachelors degree in journalism from
Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
events.petchem-update.com/
petrochemicals-workforcedevelopment
Daniel Groves is the Director of Operations and workforce consultant for the Construction Users Roundtable (CURT), an international
organization of about sixty national & global companies representing
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nearly $200 billion in annual construction spending. Through his
workforce-related work, Daniel developed the Construction Labor
Market Analyzer, an online, national skilled labor supply and demand
risk analytics tool, and the 20/20 Foresight Report, a labor market
analytics publication. He graduated from Asbury University in Kentucky
with degrees in accounting and business management.
Jim Hanna is Group HR Executive, Construction, Fabrication and Craft
Services at Fluor, one of the worlds largest publicly traded engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance and project management
companies. He has worked for Fluor for over 32 years, having joined the
company directly after obtaining an associate degree in architectural
drafting and a bachelors degree in construction management.
J.D. Slaughter is vice president of S&B Engineers and Constructors,
Ltd., a Houston-based engineering, procurement and construction
company that services a range of industries. He has been with S&B
for 18 years, and is the third generation of his family to work for the
company, which was co-founded by his grandfather in the 1960s. He
holds an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Texas
A&M University.
Elton Stuckly, Jr. is vice chancellor and chief operations officer at
Texas State Technical College (TSTC), the only state-supported
technical college system in Texas. Elton has been working with the
college for almost 29 years, and was the first TSTC graduate to come
back and serve as president. He holds a TSTC associate degree in
electrical power technology along with a bachelors and masters
degree in technology, and a doctorate in education.
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Curt Eysink, Louisiana Workforce Commission
Can you tell us about how the role of the Workforce Commission in
addressing the skills gap for workforce development?
We have multiple roles. The first one, where it all started, was forecasting. Its important that there is an independent entity, separate from the
training and education people, and separate from the companies, to do
the forecasting. Unless the forecasting is credible, then its not going to
be sufficient to get people to change their operations. Its not going to
be sufficient for education and training providers to change what they
do to change their courses and scale up in some of these programs
unless theres a credible forecast that says theres a need for that to be
done.
We work very closely with industry to do that. Its most important that industry has faith in that forecast, and I think weve got
that in Louisiana. We do our own forecasting, but we also use the
Construction Labor Market Analyzer (CLMA). We use that to enrich
our forecast in the industrial and construction fields, along with other
sources.
The next role is to pull all the right people to the table to develop the
best response to that forecast. You figure out what the gap is, and then
get the right people to that table to figure out the solution.
The last major step is helping to fill the pipeline of people into whatever
the training response needs to be, for example by increasing capacity
and adding new classes, and by helping other entities fill their pipeline.
What are the main challenges behind the workforce shortage, in particular relating to the petrochemical industry?
Firstly, I dont think there was ever a workforce gap analysis that
everybody had faith in in the same way. The next major challenge was
figuring out how to respond quickly to that gap analysis. We did a
number of things. We work with high school educators and community
technical college educators primarily to identify for all the crafts for
which there is a gap a standardized curriculum. For the most part we
run NCCER, but also AWF for welding. And then we need to develop
rapid-cycle training along those curricula.
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For the recruits, we wanted to standardize the price so that no matter

where they went for training they would get the same thing, and that it
costs the same. We need all sorts of training engaged in this herculean
task, and we didnt want anybody priced out of the market because we
need that capacity.
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The beauty of standardized training and pricing is that something like

NCCER or AWF produces a portable credential, so people can easily roll
from one job to the next.
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The other challenge then is filling that pipeline. There is somewhat of
a stigma against a career built on a technical education, and blue-collar type jobs. Theres an idea that theyre secondary in some way.
Thats clearly not the case, particularly when it comes to income and
long-term career potential. Its also not the case that they dont require
well-educated, smart people. Were supporting some private initiatives
that are doing a lot of work around analyzing exactly what those barriers are to recruitment an enrolment, and to overcome them.
In your opinion, why do you think the workforce skills gap has developed to the current shortage?
Theres a question over whether there is a shortage or not. Clearly there
is high demand, and there is a gap today. But all 80,000 or 100,000
people, whatever it ends up being, arent needed today. They dont
need to be sitting on the sidelines ready to go to work, waiting for
these projects to start. So a shortage would be there if the workforce
wasnt present when these projects start, if they couldnt staff up. Im
not saying its easy for them to staff up its certainly tight but I dont
think we have a shortage yet.
One may well develop. The problem is not solved yet, and there are a
number of reasons for this. One is that we are blessed with the biggest
industrial construction boom in Louisiana history, and maybe one of
the largest booms in US history. I would be shocked if it wasnt difficult
to meet this challenge. But its the challenge that we wanted. Theres
extreme demand.
The other part of it has been the undervaluing of technical education as
a whole, and jobs that require you to work outside and wear a tool belt.
People, at least around here, have undervalued those jobs in society.
Why is collaboration between education and industry so important?
Which other groups or organizations do you think are crucial to development of the future workforce?
Without business and industry at the table talking directly to educators,
there is no way in the world we could be sure that those educators
were teaching or training people on the right things. They wouldnt
have the right proportions or scale in their programs, and they would
have difficulty having the right content in those programs. They
wouldnt be producing enough people on time. Theyd be producing
maybe well-educated people, but with degrees and other credentials
that would not prepare them for a job.
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What weve found is that its easy to ignore the market until the people
who operate in that market are sitting right across the table from you,
looking you in the eye, and saying what they need and on what time
frame. Were finding that educators have been extremely responsive to
that, and are enjoying the fruits of that success in some very significant
ways.
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Because our community and technical colleges have instituted this
rapid cycle NCCER training, they received a $300,000 grant from
Praxair, and recently also got a $1 million grant from JP Morgan Chase
to further increase their capacity to produce people with these valuable
credentials. At high schools, Louisiana is funding much more technical
education around industry-based certificates (IBCs) that are approved
by a business council inside my department.
That council is made up of 41 people, and 21 have to be representatives
of business and industry. High schools get this additional money to
train kids only in the fields of those approved IBCs. Were seeing high
schools now also benefitting directly in terms of cash, and also in terms
of the outcomes of their students based on the fact that business and
industry is at the table, providing some of the directional guidance for
their programs. Thats a brand new thing for Louisiana, and its very
exciting for us.
Another reasons is that business and industry need to upskill their
existing workforce. I think we will develop a shortage in highly-skilled
craftspeople if we dont continue as a society to educate and train the
existing workforce whose skills are not at the top of their field yet. The
real shortage is going to develop among highly-skilled people. And the
only way to get there is a lot of work experience and additional training.
That has to be encouraged for the existing workforce.
Also, if we dont do something about attrition from the building trades,
we put so much more pressure on our education and training system.
Increasing the skills and the earnings of the people in those crafts will
dramatically reduce attrition and keep them in longer. In Louisiana,
with the volume that we have coming, a 5 per cent decrease in attrition
every year could result in perhaps 25,000 fewer people needing to be
recruited and trained, just to satisfy this boom that we can see today.
Looking forward, what do you think is the next step towards bridging
the skills gap for the industry?
I think the next challenge is filling the pipeline. Thats the biggest thing.
In addition to reducing the size of that pipeline to meet the need by
keeping more people in, I think we still have to do a lot of recruiting
and overcome a lot of misconceptions and the stigma around a career
and technical education. All of these jobs really do require education
beyond high school of one kind or another. Its possible for kids to
get that education while theyre still in high school, but for the most
part its going to be delivered by the same people who are training in
community and technical colleges. They still need to learn math, and
they still need to learn how to think.
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Theres concern that at the end of this boom, all of these people who
trained for these jobs will have nothing left that the jobs will evaporate. I dont think thats the case because there will always be significant
attrition from these fields. A lot of them will also go to work for these
plants once theyre built. In Lake Charles, theyve done some studies
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that show that anywhere from 20 to 30 per cent of the construction
workforce stays on at those plants. Its also unlikely that the projects we
know about today are the only projects that will happen.
Even in Louisiana, which has one of the most impressive epicenters of
growth in the country right now in these sectors, there are people who
live here who dont understand the magnitude of whats coming. Its
what leaders of business and industry are talking about all the time. But
we have countless people who live here who dont know the value of
these opportunities. They dont understand the career pathways that
exist for people going into these fields theyre not dead-end jobs any
more.
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Daniel Groves, Construction Users Roundtable
Can you tell us a bit about CURTs focus on workforce, and how the
CLMA works to address this problem?
CURT has been working for years on the issue of workforce development, and is focused specifically on long-term solutions to resolving the problem and lessening risk. One of the biggest challenges
is first understanding exactly what the scope of the problem is. The
Construction Labor Market Analyzer (CLMA) was designed to help the
industry better understand what the demand for skilled labor is when
that demand is going to be peaking, how it ebbs and flows, where and
which crafts are going to be needed.
Theres a structured process for how that works in terms of how we
capture information from the owners building the projects, and capture
supply information from labor unions and contractors. All that information is input in the CLMA database, which is highly secure, and that
information is aggregated. When all that is done, the CLMA help the
user is understand, for example, how many pipefitters will be needed
in the third quarter of 2017 within a 175 mile radius of Houston, Texas.
How many are needed, and how many are available? What is the attrition expected to be? Will there be enough workers, and when do we
have to start preparing? Thats the essence of what the CLMA does.
To tie that back to CURT, what weve been doing on the workforce
committee is trying to understand, number one, what the challenge
is (thats what the CLMA does). Number two, once you know the
challenge, what do you do? Weve developed a whole series of risk
mitigation options depending on where you are in the life cycle of
your project. Those risk mitigation options are ways you can address
a workforce shortage, based on the experience of CURT owners and
contractors, and lessen the impact on your project.
Number three is building a sufficient workforce. One of the other things
CURT has been doing through the workforce committee has been
to build technology that will benchmark and measure a contractors
commitment and activities towards building a workforce so that were
building the population of workers, as opposed to just offering them
more money and grabbing them from somewhere else.
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What are the main challenges behind the workforce shortage and the
key concerns of CURT members?
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The big concern is simply that when we look down the road, based on
the demand that is currently anticipated, there appears to be around
a 2 million skilled worker shortage over the next four to five years.
That covers the entire United States all non-residential activity, both
commercial and industrial.
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Thats an enormous number. And that number is compounded by being
in a post-recession period a number of workers who lost their jobs
didnt return to the industry. And you also have the challenge of an
aging workforce population where workers are retiring or leaving the
industry more quickly than were replacing them. Thats why we believe
that theres a huge shortage and that something has to be done.
In short, over the past two to three decades, we just havent invested
enough in building the workforce. What happens in construction is that
it ebbs and flows. So when it peaks theres panic about getting a sufficient number of workers. And then theres the inevitable slowdown in
which theres no shortage. What the industry tends to do is compete
for labor with wages, per diems and other types of incentives when
we need to be improving productivity and recruiting more people in
getting them trained, getting them into apprentice programs, and
moving them so that we have a more levelled-out supply of workers.
We should be recruiting and training during down periods. But instead
we say, well, everythings ok. So you have a perpetual deterioration of
available workers over time. But because it doesnt happen all at once
its not quite as painful. Everybody just kind of gets through the next
challenge. Thats catching up with us.
Number one, I think owners have to take charge on the issue of
workforce development. Owners have typically taken the approach that
we dont hire boilermakers, its not our problem. They hire contractors, who hire boilermakers, so its their problem. But contractors by
and large are not getting the job done. This means that somebody has
to take leadership, and push the industry to do something. The owners
have to do that because the owners have the checkbook. They have the
leverage, and they can make it happen if they create the mandate.
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The second point is that once youve identified a challenge, now you
have to figure out how youre going to address it. If you need to recruit
and train, where are you going to train them? Are there sufficient
number of seats to do that? Are there a sufficient number of openings?
So contractors have to be committed to training. They have to be
committed to filling a pipeline. They have to be committed to having a
minimum number of entrants relative to journeymen.
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The third thing is education, which is critical too. There needs to be a

collaborative relationship between industry and schools, otherwise the
schools arent going to spend money filling seats if industry is not going
to hire them.
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Heres an example of where this is working successfully. Louisiana is
taking a very proactive approach. In fact, we work directly with them
through the CLMA. Theyre identifying what expected demand is, what
the available workforce in their state is, and what the gap is. Once
they understand that gap, then theyve gone to the technical schools,
to all the training facilities that are also available and theyve created
a partnering relationship with them that asks will you do this level of
training, will you train this many people, if we start sending people to
you? And so whats happening is that theyre filling all of the available
training seats in order to build a workforce that will be ready when
theyre needed.
So that kind of relationship starts with owners. Then it goes to contactors actually making the commitment to do it. Then it requires a collaborative relationship between industry and training providers, including
the government, to actually accomplish that.
This is one of the reasons we developed the Contractors Workforce
Development Assessment (CWDA). Its a new tool that has come out
of CURT, and was launched just a few months ago that measures a
contractors engagement in workforce development.
When contractors are engaged in doing this, because owners are
requiring or expecting it, there will be skills upgrades. Once you start
upgrading skills, then you know what the gap is behind them, and you
know that you have to start filling it by recruiting people in or continually upgrading other people, from laborers to craft helpers to apprentices and so on.
It has to start with industry recognizing a challenge and then being
committed to addressing it. Once we do that, well fill the skills gap.
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There are other challenges, of course. People need to want to come

into the industry. There seems to be less and less interest in that. Part
of it is because the US educational system doesnt encourage people
to pursue vocational education. Everything is pointed towards college,
but not everybody is wired for that. Until schools stop pushing people
into career paths that might not be what theyre particularly interested
in, were going to continue to have a challenge. The problem is not that
people wouldnt pursue it the problem is ignorance. They just dont
know that the options are and how lucrative and fulfilling a construction career can be.
There have been a lot of other continuing efforts from CURT as well
to do recruiting and advertising campaigns to address this, and theyve
been effective.
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Jim Hanna, Fluor
Can you tell us about Fluors focus regarding workforce development

how much of a priority is this for you?
We work very closely in partnership with the National Center for
Construction Education and Research (NCCER). In fact, 20 years ago
Fluor gave NCCER our craft training and certification program. At one
time, Fluor developed craft training materials and certification process
that to validate craft skills in the workplace. That helped create the
curriculum that NCCER uses today.
We are also one of the few companies that provide craft training
ourselves on site using the NCCER curriculum. We have one project
now in Freeport, Texas where more than 150 of our employees
take classes after hours with Fluor foremen and general foremen as
instructors. We have an NCCER-certified master trainer who is a Fluor
employee who oversees all this training, and were starting another
project where were setting up the same type of approach. Many
contractors are doing training through contractor associations or
community colleges, and the classrooms are full at night. We have
found the best way is to teach it as we have done for years on our
project sites.
This ramp-up on the Gulf Coast with shale gas development is unprecedented. The industry has not reinvested in training and developing the
workforce for many years. Its a long-term investment, but you must
train your workforce to have any success in re-establishing a workforce
to build from.
Skills gaps are significant in the mechanical and electrical trades,
especially welding. There has been historically a workforce that has
done a lot of outage work and turnaround work in the power and oil
and gas industries, but when you layer on top of that this investment
development that the owners are doing in their respective facilities, or
the new facilities that they are building, then demand is far greater than
weve seen in a long time.
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And its sustainable its over the next seven to ten years. When you
look at these owners and their respective facilities, their own existing operating staff is near retirement. So the owners often look to the
turnaround maintenance contractors, their staff, to hire and build their
own staffs. Theres huge demand. In the state of Louisiana over the next
few years theyre forecasting over $20 billion in investment per year. So
it will really stretch the demand for resources.
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And in Texas were seeing the same type of growth. Theres a lot of
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investment and a lot of development that will continue for many years
in the future. Training is essential there needs to be significant investment in training to build that workforce.
What do you see as the main challenges behind the skills gap and
workforce shortage facing the petrochemical / construction industries?
Its that the size of these projects is so large. Our project in Freeport
will peak at over 4,000 craft. At Baytown, were going to peak at 3,200,
and competitors have projects that are over 3,000. All of these projects
have large peak craft manpower levels that they need to get to. Then
you get over to Louisiana. Lake Charles alone will probably have 25,000
craft just in that pocket. And theres more work coming. Lake Charles is
only 150 miles from Baytown and so everyone is needing the resource,
and its all over the next three to five years. These projects will all be
going on at the same time.
Its going to be a challenge for the contractors to train people and to
build alliances with community colleges. We have one with Lee College
we just gave Lee College in Baytown $50,000 to partner with them,
to do some entry-level training for us as well as complement the Fluor
craft training program on the project for Chevron Phillips Chemical.
We gave $25,000 earlier this year to Brazosport Community College,
close by our project with Dow in Freeport. Theyre doing entry-level
training with pipefitter helpers. We typically will hire someone local in
the community as a utility worker, as a general laborer. They come to
work every day, theyre drug-free, and they have an interest in learning
a skill. Well get them into entry-level pipe or entry-level instrumentation. They go to school at night the training is offered free from
us. Theyre not paid to do the training, its typically two days a week,
two-hour session. So they start learning the skillsets so that in three to
four years they can grow to be a journeyman if they show up to work
every day and continue to expand their knowledge.
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I think you have to have a supportive owner that recognizes the need
for the investment. In these local communities youve got to build
a workforce. The community colleges historically have been more
focused on giving two- and four-year degrees. But its easier for me to
place a welder today than someone with a four-year degree, because
the need for welders is so much greater. Yes theres a need for people
with four-year degrees, but theyre projecting in Louisiana that they
need about 85,000 craft. They obviously dont need 85,000 engineers
they need engineers, but not to that magnitude.
The demand for vocational, technical skills is greater today than its
been for a long time in the US, especially on the Gulf Coast. Historically
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kids were thinking they had to get four-year degrees problem is,
those jobs are getting harder to find than a craft position on a project
where you can make very good money and have a very long sustainable
career.
Its going to be an ongoing challenge and commitment. Unfortunately
when budgets are tight one of the first things that goes is training.
But the more sophisticated owners and contractors are those that are
willing to make the investment. Theres not many doing today what
were doing on our projects training at the project sites. And thats a
differentiator. Youve just got to be committed to doing that and recognize that the skills gap is great. We have to reinvest in that workforce to
make it better for the future.
The problem we have is that, why didnt we do this four or five years
ago? Well, the jobs werent there. Its hard to get anyone interested and
take training when you dont have a specific job for them.
The demand is there now, were behind the curve, and weve just got
to be very focused and committed to have these partnerships. Thats
why we did what we did with Lee College and Brazosport. We cant
do without education in these local communities. But we also cant
just rely on education to do the training. We have to do our part as
a contractor. The people that provide jobs are industry and employers and the contractors, and the owners are the ones that build the
projects, and we all have to work together and collaborate to move
forward and be successful.
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J.D. Slaughter, S&B Engineers and Constructors, Ltd.
Can you tell us about S&B Engineers and Constructors focus regarding
workforce development how much of a priority is this for you?
Workforce development is extremely important. In around 1999-2000,
my father, who is currently president of the company, made the
decision to provide every craft professional at our company with
access to skill and career development. This was during a downturn
in our industry, but he felt it was necessary to do that, not just for
recruiting, but also to ensure we develop craft professionals who work
safe and are productive. So weve had 15 years of finding a way to
provide workforce development training for our craft professionals as
efficiently as possible.
We already have the infrastructure in place to do this, and were
ramping this up even further by hiring some people in full time with
zero experience, giving them training for 12 weeks, and then integrating them into our workforce. So were extremely committed to
workforce development and providing that to our employees.
And its not just to the new hires we look at the workforce as a
three-legged stool. We have helpers, we have journeymen and we
have supervisors. We have a significant effort underway in supervisory
training. We have a decree from my father that no one can serve in
a supervisory role without going through a supervisors academy. So
when someone gets promoted to a supervisors role, they have to go
through 40 hours of intense full-time training, and additional mentorship afterwards.
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Actually, its been in decline since the 1980s. In 1978, the average wage
rate for a craft professional was around $14 per hour. If you look at
wages, they stayed relatively flat in the subsequent thirty or so years,
but adjusted for inflation actually more than halved to around $6 per
hour (in 1978 dollars). It wasnt until 2006-2007 that wages for the craft
professional started to increase to where they are today. But, adjusting
for inflation, wages still have not yet reached the 1978 level of buying
power. So construction became a poor paying job. You werent recruiting the same level of talent, and people werent seeing the opportunity
as a long term career. And that led to the decline. Competition also
drove the construction owners to do less and less workforce development. You saw trade unions dissolve in the South they couldnt
compete. Weve behaved our way into this issue. And were trying to
behave our way out of it.
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What do you see as the main challenges behind the skills gap
and workforce shortage facing the petrochemical / construction
industries?
The greatest challenge is the timeframe. We follow the projects that
are announced and underway fairly closely. Based on our data, it looks
like the peak of the workforce requirement will hit the Houston area by
September and October 2015. Then the next peak will be in the Lake
Charles area in September and October 2016. Following that a peak will
occur around Corpus Christi around the same time of the year in 2017.
So we have this moving workforce demand curve that is imminent.
The biggest challenge is the magnitude of that peak the little time we
have to train our way out and solve the problem. But also if you look
at the industry, most of the companies and associations are focused
on secondary education, bringing vocational training back into the
schools, or are focused on students and community colleges. I believe
in the return of vocational training to schools, but even if you were
to implement a program fairly quickly, youre still talking about not
making an impact until four or five years down the road, and we just
dont have the time.
So the biggest challenge is not only finding craft professionals and
supervisors, but getting the machine that is the training institutions that
are out there to focus on training the unskilled or under-skilled individuals already in the workplace, and quickly.
It is important, but lets define education for middle schools and high
schools, in the long term, it is essential. Community college collaboration is important because again the model for a lot of community
colleges is two-year degrees. Brown & Root was able to create a craft
professional in three months. And thats the type of effort we need
now, not two-year associates degrees from a community college to
create a welder or a pipe fitter or an electrician.
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We have to do something immediately in order to supply enough

people for this coming peak, to support this work coming up. There
needs to be accelerated training. Collaboration is important because
industry needs to be talking to these two-year community colleges
and trying to get them to drive away from two-year degrees and more
into accelerated training. And there is some of that happening now.
Lee College has an accelerated training that theyre trying to roll out.
Houston Area Safety Council is developing a workforce development
building, and theyre going to be focused on just-in-time training for
task-based training. They wont be a certified craft professional, but
at least they will help with some small tools and task-based skills to
provide some assistance in meeting this demand.
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I think the certification process is important in the long term, but in
the short term we need to do the training necessary to get people into
the workforce. Another issue that we have is that a lot of our clients
have minimum training or experience requirements to get on site. With
the coming workforce shortage, they will need to alleviate some of
those requirements to allow a certain number of new entrants into the
workforce. If every one of our customers has a minimum work experience or certification requirement, then theyre just exacerbating the
issue.
We have companies like us who train, and there are institutions out
there providing training. Getting them to provide a more accelerating
program is important, but the biggest need is for the recruitment of
people who are not of high-school age but older, and are in dead-end
or minimum wage jobs. The recruitment of those people, and telling
them what a good career construction can be, helping to improve the
image of construction. That it is not a very dirty, low-paid, low-skilled
job, but one that they can create a career out of. Its advocating the
industry and the recruitment of those new entrants.
According to the Greater Houston Partnership, forty percent of our
employee base in the Houston area are in unskilled, low paying jobs,
and that comes out to about two million people. Thats two million
people making minimum wage, when a helper in our industry is making
$18-22 per hour. So communicating that with the masses is important,
finding the feeder organizations that are working with those people to
try to drive them towards our industry and the places that are providing
training. There are fewer people working on that issue than are working
on training or building relationships with secondary schools and
community colleges. So Id say thats the biggest gap for us to fix.
Development 2015
Stage
16
There are some programs out there such as GoBuildAlabama and Build
Your Future in Louisiana that are trying to do that. But in Texas we really
dont have anything like that. We are working with the Greater Houston
Partnership on a program called Upskill Houston which will serve as an
advocate for the industry with the future workforce, and hopefully that
will get some traction.
Development
Elton Stuckly, Jr., Texas State Technical College
In your opinion as an educator, why do you think the workforce skills

gap has developed to the current shortage?
Back in the late 1980s and 90s, there was a push across the nation to
encourage people to get at least a bachelors degree. It was pushed to
the point where unless you had a bachelors degree, you were never
going to be able to accomplish anything. When we hit the turn of the
century, we started hearing cries from business and industry that there
was an ageing workforce and there were no replacements coming in.
Now the pendulum is swinging in the other direction. And Im glad it
is. Because its not just about the degree, its about the career choice,
what you want to do, and what your earning potential is.
How focused is Texas State Technical College on working with industry for the development of the workforce, in particular relating to the
petrochemical and construction industries?
In my 29-year career with the college, I was an instructor, department
chair, division director, president and now vice chancellor, and working
with industry is key. In those particular areas, through our advisory
committees, and those committees are made up of representatives
from the construction field and the petrochemical area, it is key to the
success of the programs because they advise us on what we need to
teach in those particular programs.
We meet twice a year with them, and its important that we maintain
those relationships as we move forward because if were not teaching
the right things, then were not going to be able to place our graduates.
By having that relationship, were able to develop more relationships.
A lot of our success in those two areas has been by word of mouth
within industry because it spreads. If you get a TSTC graduate, you
have a great employee. Its critical to everything that we do as a college
because thats our goal, thats our mission to get students in, to train
them in the shortest amount of time, and put them out there in a great
paying job. So for those particular areas its a must.
Development 2015
What do you see as the main challenges behind the skills gap and
workforce shortage facing the petrochemical and construction
industries?
Its not the training, or the type of training we still have in this country
the mind-set that technical education is less than. I see things getting
a little better, but until our culture relinquishes this mentality that you
have to have a bachelors or a masters degree to be successful, its very
hard to overcome that. If we can get the students in the door, we can
train them.
Stage
But it is changing. Especially over the last five years because more
17
Development
and more people are asking, is college the right answer? Is having a
bachelors degree the right answer? Compare the pay after a two-year
technical college degree versus a four-year degree in psychology.
Theres no comparison. Its starting to change, but we have to keep
pushing the message. The mind-set is that you have to have at least a
bachelors or a masters degree to be successful. And thats absolutely
not true.
Without it, if you dont know what the industry needs are, you dont
know what to provide. TSTC was the first in the state of Texas, and
probably in the nation, to go to this new funding model that we have
where were getting paid strictly on completion and placement. We
dont get paid on contact hours any more we get paid at the end. If a
student comes in and doesnt finish, we dont get paid for it. And if we
put out a bad product theyre not going to hire, and we might as well
close the doors.
It is critical for us to stay in contact with industry and form those
relationships because our goal is to provide the absolute best technician. Without that relationship, knowing what industrys needs are, we
cant do that.
Its going to take that continued push for people, for legislators at the
state and federal level to keep pounding and pounding on the importance of letting students pick options and not just focusing on having a
degree. Thats what its going to take.
Development 2015
Stage
18
We can bridge that gap, but as I said before, were going to have to
change the mind-set, and make it so that technical education is not a
less-than degree. Its something thats relevant, needed in this country,
and needed around the world. As an American it bothers me that
were supposed to be the greatest county on this earth and we have
an unemployment rate of 6 or 7 per cent. And yet we have to import
skilled technicians from other countries because we dont have them
here in the United States. It doesnt make sense. We should be training
unemployed Americans to fill those skilled jobs.
Development
Conclusion
It seems that along with all the immense investment in land, plant and
technology going on in the US petrochemical industry today, the real
critical element may turn out to be investing wisely in people and not
just for the short term.
For this investment in the workforce to be efficient and worthwhile,
good forecasts are required, and this is where the Constructions Users
Roundtable has been playing an important role. Accurate figures as
to when and where craft workers will be needed, so training can be
provided accordingly. The varying roles of owners and contractors
also becomes very important here as Daniel Groves points out,
owners perhaps need to take a more proactive role in making sure the
workforce of tomorrow can be put in place.
The main concern raised by all our respondents, however, is that in
order to secure an adequate workforce, investment in people needs to
be seen as much more than simply paying wages. It is about creating
better access to a worthwhile career and advancement and further
training for those already employed within the sector. As Elton Stuckly,
Jr. notes, its also about championing craft skills as a whole overturning past presumptions, and making sure people understand that these
are not the low-paid, low-skilled, dead-end jobs that some still think
they are.
People need to be channeled into training programs but the right
training programs. And this is where dialogue with and support for
educators is crucial. The relationships described above between industry and educational institutions are being put in place to make sure that
the workforce currently being trained is learning the right skills for the
demand that will be seen over the next decade and beyond.
As long as the owners, contractors, educators and government can
work together, then, it seems the current gap in staffing may not
become the critical, growth-curtailing shortfall that some fear, and that
American jobs can be for the most part taken by American workers.
Development 2015
Stage
19
The benefits of this to local communities across the US will be

enormous, and will create a talent pool able to look to the future with
confidence.

Petrochemical

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Petrochemicals Workforce

Curt Eysink is executive director of the Louisiana Workforce

For the recruits, we wanted to standardize the price so that no matter

The beauty of standardized training and pricing is that something like

The third thing is education, which is critical too. There needs to be a

There are other challenges, of course. People need to want to come

Can you tell us about Fluors focus regarding workforce development

We have to do something immediately in order to supply enough

In your opinion as an educator, why do you think the workforce skills

The benefits of this to local communities across the US will be

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