The Critical Skills Investment Fund - supporting the wind industry?

The guidelines for the ‘Critical Skills Investment Fund’ were released a few weeks ago (comments on them closed last week unfortunately - so too late to prompt some more feedback) and this was something that the wind industry needed to follow a little more than I am aware was done. The fund is worth $200million and is aimed at the resources, construction, renewable energy and infrastructure sectors, and intends to help industry secure a skilled workforce and address the growing demand for trained workers. So it is a fair chance that some of this money should wind up supporting the training of wind technicians and others in the industry. However, I worry that the fund has been designed to support the resources industry far more than the renewable industry.

This is essentially because the draft guidelines for the Fund contain some things that make it difficult for my organisation (and I think others in the industry) to gain much value from the fund, most notably the requirement that the funds can only be spent on courses accredited under the Australian national training system. This means the fund would be worthless to us in two of our most expensive training areas, turbine training and project management. There are of course no accredited Australian turbine courses, as the national system has yet to catch up with this need (it is slow moving) and for project management, the national qualifications are seen as not being rigorous enough by industry generally, so therefor both our project managers and Suzlon globally would prefer us to do the courses aligned to the global Project Management Institute qualifications.

My other concern about the fund was the makeup of the board overseeing the fund – it seems loaded with mining and petroleum people with the chair of the board Dr Keith Spence, although a very sharp and engaging fellow, being a flag waver for carbon capture and storage who I have heard specifically say wind is not the answer to our clean energy needs, due his opinion that it cannot assist with baseload power. I think perhaps someone from the renewable industry (maybe from the Clean Energy Council) should be on the board of a fund like this that specifically mentions renewable energy as a target industry. I just hope they mean it when they say renewable energy is something the fund wishes to support, not just the extraction industries.

The race for turbine technician qualifications

I want to put down here a few quick thoughts on the current moves towards developing qualifications for wind technicians in Australia. This will be pretty brief - there is a lot to this, but I just want to put a few thoughts out there initially for whoever is reading.

Australia is in need of some wind turbine service technician qualifications. Cert 3 or 4, Diploma, or a trade certificate. The lack of these qualifications is significantly hampering the development of technician skills at a time when demand for their skills is rapidly rising.

There seems to be three groups (at least that I know of) who are working to develop qualifications for technicians, and all the interest right now is in service and maintenance technicians. All three groups have made a certain amount of progress, and there has been a certain amount of cooperation, but I am worried about how it is going, as none of the groups seem to have really managed to convince the industry to get on board.

The first group to surface in this space is the Australian Wind Energy Institute (AWEI), run by Siegfried Angerer. Siegfried is making big statements and talking about using the qualifications developed for the new wind turbine technician apprenticeship that has just begun in the UK (http://www.cityandguilds.com/61041.html?s=2), but has not come up with much in the way of detail, and does not have the confidence of the industry at all, due to a tendency to make big promises and not really listen to what the industry wants. He seems more interested in engaging with government than the industry, which makes me worry about what his angle really is. What he does have though, is a partnership with the Danish Wind Power Academy(DWPA), who do at least deliver good quality training across a few different turbines. I don’t see much future in the UK qualifications as they would still need to go through the process of being re-written in Australian formats before going through a standard registration process in a training package and others have already got drafted competency units doing this, but while Siegfried continues to work with the DWPA, he may well have something to offer the industry in regards to training, it just might be a little less than he currently seems to think he can offer.

The second group trying to develop a qualification, and who are a lot closer than the AWEI to producing something, are a group from Box Hill Tafe, who are trying to develop some units for a Diploma of Engineering and register them in Victoria. These guys have drafted some units that are reasonable, although look a little rushed, and are now trying to get through the ‘industry consultation’ hoops required for Victorian registration so they can start running the course next year. Victorian registration is easier than national, but is not that different for practical purposes, which means government funding reliant on qualifications. The Box Hill Tafe group seem likely to get their units registered, which is positive, although I hope they get a little more polished, and I will be helping with this, but I still have some concerns, firstly about who they would have to teach the course, and then secondly, most importantly, about the Industrial Relations implications of the course. These concerns are in regards to how this course might fit in with the classification structure for service technicians that my organization has negotiated with the staff and the CEPU. On the surface the qualification seems to provide what Box Hill Tafe wants rather than what we want, and is a bit of a rush job, because I’m not certain really the question of what qual the industry wants has really been asked or really thought through. This will be my focus of discussion with Box Hill this week.

The third group wanting to work towards a wind farm technician qualification is EEOz, the skills council for Electricity Generation (and Electrotechnology and Gas). Now these guys are the real deal – they look after the Electricity Generation training package, where I think the qualifications belong, and they are the skills council, so they are in the best position to get any units registered and going. EEOz have also drafted some units, and I think theirs are pretty good, better individually than those produced by Box Hill, but not as well thought through as a group. But they still have their own issues. EEOz has not yet been able to engage the industry, with myself the only person to turn up to the recent Generation NTAG meeting. I think they are trying, but I haven’t heard from them since then, after hearing a few promises about pushing forward. This goes to my second concern, being timeliness, as many people have expressed that EEOz are not a fast moving organization and waiting for these units to be registered and a qualification developed could take a lot of time, the most confident are saying 2012, but I hope they are wrong, because I have a bit of faith in EEoz. But I do have a final concern with them, and that is in regards to demarcation. EEOz are an organization run by electricians, and to a certain extent for electricians, and only a portion of wind technicians are electricians, and there is a real concern that EEOz will try to push an agenda based on limiting wind farm technician work to licensed electricians, very much against the wishes of the industry. Sure, a couple of electricians on the staff of a wind farm is good, but they don’t tend to last long, because :

1.     It’s easier to wire houses than climb an eighty metre vertical ladder three times a day for the same pay

2.     As a turbine technician you have to work also on gearboxes and hydraulic machinery, and electricians often don’t want to

3.     There is a lot of cleaning involved in being a wind tech, oil, grease, and dust is everywhere and always needing to be wiped up, and electricians often don’t go for this much either.

If you restrict wind farm technician work to electricians, it will make it very difficult to get and keep staff, because they will mostly have better options. So while I think EEOz is the best option for the long run, there are some significant issues to be overcome.

Anyway, that is a quick rundown of the state of play as I see it, three different players in this field working their own angles, with the industry too busy to really engage enough in what is going on. It is a bit worrying really, and I think whatever results will take a bit of work to clean up, but on the other hand, any industrial wind turbine competency units will provide  much simpler access to government funding for training that is currently pretty expensive.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not represent the views or policy of any organisation he is associated with.