Hiring managers for the biggest transportation projects isn’t hard, but finding skilled labor is. The solution is multifaceted but comes down to engaging talent early and often at every level.
Exciting projects attract senior leaders
Amtrak has sourced managers almost entirely without the use of search firms, Amtrak Acting Sr. Vice President for Capital Delivery Jim Short told the audience Monday at The NYNJ Infrastructure Forum organized by Engineering News-Record.
“We offer a competitive package … and it’s an exciting place to work,” Short said.
James Starace, chief of program delivery of the Gateway Development Commission, concurred while sharing the stage with Short. In collaboration with Amtrak and other agencies, Gateway is building the Hudson Tunnel Project. These partnerships allow the New York-New Jersey commission to keep a relatively small staff of no more than 70 people.
“These challenging, exciting projects – they attract people. Hopefully, that continues,” Starace said. “We’re all competing for young talent, old talent.”
Skilled labor is hard to come by
The greatest staffing challenge is that there isn’t enough talent in the pipeline, several speakers said Monday.
“Some things you don’t want to outsource,” such as for some highly skilled positions, Short said, adding that Amtrak has about 4,000 union laborers.
Starace suggests introducing engineering at the grade school level, while Stephanie Winkelhake, chief engineer for the New York State Department of Transportation, shared that her department is approaching high schools, as well as working directly with universities.
“The number of students graduating in civil engineering is declining. … We all need them. Probably the biggest thing is doing our part earlier on, Winkelhake said.
Engagement continues in the workplace
Once onboard, staff engagement remains important. At the junior level, that can mean something as simple as offering rotations. They provide new engineers a chance to learn about different specialties, which they may want to pursue. The experience also may aid later efforts at collaboration, which conference speakers said are key to infrastructure project success.
New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection begins offering rotations next year and has helped people work towards earning their professional engineering license, department Chief Financial Officer Nerissa Moray said. Mentoring and other formal training programs have also gained importance.
Moray emphasized that engagement isn’t important only for newbies. For two years, the city Department of Environmental Protection has exposed senior staff to start-up-type solutions via its Environmental Tech Lab, which features about 100 potential water quality solutions.
“We’ve had hundreds of people at a senior level” participate, Moray said. It gives them “a chance to see things differently. … Expose them to new innovations happening in the field. … It keeps them really interested, really engaging.”
Hiring and retaining are the end result, though. Organizations need to better forecast labor demands, Short said. For example, some positions require highly specialized training that can take more than two years to complete. While the agency would like to shorten that training cycle, safety considerations make it difficult to fast-track, he said.