Editorial Comment

Mar. 2002 Vol. 223 No. 3  Editorial Comment

Thomas R. Wright, Jr.,  Publisher

Solving the personnel shortage. The lack of skilled personnel is one of the largest issues facing the industry, and consequently, generates much discussion. Solutions generally presented are, "we must actively recruit new graduates and encourage staff to stay within the industry," or "we must change the perception of what professional engineering is all about."

These are good words, but according to Lorne Gifford, who works as an offshore field development manager, interest in engineering as a profession continues its unfortunate downward spiral. "Its public perception is still plagued by association with photocopier repairmen and auto mechanics, and young people see the oil business as a dirty, sunset industry that is destroying our planet."

Gifford, who was prompted to express his opinion after reading an earlier version of this column, says the current skills shortage is not a lack of skilled personnel, but a lack of personnel at traditional salary levels. He says that it is still possible to fill the gaps in a company or project with freelance staff; however, an actual shortage is fast approaching and requires action now.

Jurassic Park featured a completely unbelievable story line, but it actually made paleontology exciting. Natural History museums are typically packed with kids positively salivating over dinosaur fossils. Many will lose interest between childhood and the real world, but Gifford fully expects to see a surge in the number of "fossil diggers" in the coming years. The point is, that children want to grow up to do things that they perceive as exciting, and their source of information is overwhelmingly film and TV. Few 12-year olds want to become engineers, because the occupation is repeatedly shown to be boring and menial.

While helping at a school-sponsored careers gathering, Gifford says that, initially, the only pupils paying any interest to his stand were the sort that were poor at math but good at woodwork and had been encouraged to find an occupation that didn’t require too much brain power. However, when presented the opportunity to address the entire group, only 10 minutes were required to highlight the importance of an engineer’s work, and to relate how much a young engineer can make and where his career can take him. After that, Gifford reports being inundated with "bright sparks" for the remainder of the evening. "Like it or not," Gifford admits, "earning potentials are tremendously influential in the choice of a career for today’s youth. So to reverse the fall in future engineers, all we need to do is let younger children know it’s more exciting than digging up old bones and convince teenagers that it pays more than being a manager at Wal-Mart."

Action plan. Gifford feels that operating companies must take the lead in investing in the future, and suggests that they coordinate and fund the following:

• Contact film and TV companies and offer them completely free access to offshore facilities for filming. Also offer help in understanding how we develop new fields and operate existing ones, so they can get ideas for story lines. Gifford says that the Roughnecks series shown a few years ago in the UK was terrible because it had unimaginative story lines. All offshore filming was based on a single, low-cost drilling rig, adding to the poor public perception of our industry.
• Companies must commit to actively attending school career seminars, and visiting schools in general. Gifford cites the military services’ "get them young" approach, which influences thousands of teenagers into joining up each year. Our industry needs to adopt a similar policy.
• In addition to attracting new engineers, we must keep the ones we already have. Gifford’s experience is that it takes only 3 to 4 years to turn a new graduate into a proficient disciplined engineer. But it also takes that same length of time to put someone off engineering for life. The dropout rates are high because engineers are often treated as low-cost, high-profit-margin machines. Graduates need to be kept interested; and to do this, Gifford says they need to spend time offshore and in foreign countries. Once they get past the first few years, they generally stay with an engineering career, but in those early years, it is very easy to make a dramatic switch and leave the industry for good.
• The final suggestion is one that will seem counterproductive. If, after his first few years with the company, the new engineer earns a good rating, Gifford says he or she should be encouraged to leave. That’s because industry requires its key players – the lead engineers, project engineers and managers – to know more than they can get from one company. For example, working for one of the oil majors won’t give you an understanding of the drivers and concerns of the contractors and consultants – you have to work for them to understand them. If one never fully understands them, then they will fall into the same traps and pitfalls time and again. Therefore, companies need to encourage their most promising young engineers to leave and work for someone else. When they return in a few years, they won’t be just a structural engineer or reservoir analyst; they will be multi-disciplined problem solvers who have the confidence and understanding to be a major influence in your company’s profits and in the future of our industry.

Conversions factors. Engineers are always coming up with new ways to express relationships between common physical properties. Here are some new ones:

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