The instrumentation skills shortage — is there light at the end of the tunnel?

The demise of the instrumentation technician in Australia began over 20 years ago when formal training in these skills ceased. Throw in Generation Y, short-sighted venture capitalists, outsourced servicing and company reengineering and it is evident that all is not well with the instrumentation profession.

Long term, this problem only looks like worsening. In a climate when apprenticeships in general are losing their appeal, the technician’s role is even less likely to attract the younger generation. Getting down and dirty does not really interest this demographic. Compounding the issue is industry’s reluctance to pay technicians competitive wages or to modernise the often unpleasant environment of process plants to help bring in the new labour the sector so desperately needs.

A close look at any plant’s process automation reveals well-defined skill sets that come into play in two distinct domains. One is the control domain which deals with SCADA packages, networking, PLCs and DCSs, and includes programming in one or more of the many IEC 61131 languages used in plant automation. The control room is generally staffed by people skilled in programming who can easily — and often do — cross over from the world of IT. The second domain deals with the sources of information that are fed to the control domain — the instrumentation. Apart from all the measuring devices, this area also deals with valves, positioners, conveyor belts, drives and many other primary elements that are managed as a result of the control system outputs. This sector requires people with mechanical and electrical skills and an aptitude for hands-on work — the instrument ‘technician’, better known as the ‘instro’.

Due to the resources boom, there has also been a huge growth in the number of remote process mining sites which, increasingly, have to employ a FIFO (fly in, fly out) strategy to get skilled people to work there. Typically, it is 10 days on, seven days off, but can vary to seven and seven. During the time on, there is no time for training and up-skilling, and during the time off, no incentive to attend training courses. How do new ideas and technologies get transplanted from the market to the site?
Adding to the problem of dwindling numbers of technical staff are the expectations of Generation Y. Manufacturing procedures which can be dangerous, physically demanding and dirty are part of the reason the process industry cannot compete against industries like IT as a career of choice for younger Australians. They are comfortable communicating via keyboards and digital data. And they expect ‘hi-tech’ process plants to look and feel like a PlayStation — not like a hot kiln, sewage pit or 40 m high silo, places where instrumentation maintenance technicians may find themselves. Building ‘PlayStation-friendly’ plants that adopt best practices and intelligent instrumentation, and cater to this generation, means accepting that major infrastructure change is inevitable.

The decline of apprenticeships and training

That apprenticeships are becoming less attractive is yet another set-back in the battle to win over younger technicians. A recent report by the University of New England’s Centre of Applied Research in Social Science has revealed that new apprentices are struggling. According to the ‘Living Standards for Apprentices’ report, minimum pay awards for first-year apprentices are below the Henderson Poverty Line and they are surviving on handouts from their parents, or a grind of second jobs and overtime.

Also, over the past two decades, there has been little or no formal education for ‘instros’ in Australia, leading to a severe shortage of skilled instrument technicians. Without ‘instros’ there cannot be accurate and reliable process information from the instrumentation, rendering the control domain ineffective. Without measurement and control, a process plant cannot function at all — it may as well be shut down!

Process plants are now faced with a short term ‘fix’ that addresses their immediate need but lays the foundation for future difficulties. With technical education thriving offshore where instrumentation is considered a career of choice, importing staff from Asia or Africa is becoming more common. This could have far-reaching impacts beyond the sector, affecting the whole economy.

The current situation is a far cry from what used to be. Historically, most large process plants had instrumentation departments. Most often these were small but dedicated workshops tasked with the maintenance and operation of all the instrumentation. These workshops were the training ground for the instrument apprentices — the newly qualified learning from the experienced — resulting in excellent ‘instros’.

But in a modern functioning plant, instrumentation activity is generally considered to be of low importance and accorded low priority, although at regular intervals, the instruments still needed to be cleaned, checked and re-calibrated.

Outsourcing

An increasing number of process plants — especially in the food, beverage and mining industries — are being taken over by venture capitalists and outside investors, and to them, the instrument department is a non-core, non-value-adding, non-profit-making activity that is best outsourced. Out goes the instrumentation department. Not surprisingly, instrument technicians who were made redundant often set themselves up as instrument maintenance contractors, contracting back to the plants they left.

A few companies have attempted a hybrid model by transferring a few instrument technicians to their electrical departments. But this was doomed to fail. Electricians work with in a high-voltage high-current environment whereas instrument technicians work in a 24 VDC milliamp world. Despite the dual training, after a period of experimentation, many of these companies also turned to outsourcing.

Although the outsourcing of these core skills worked for a few years, the industry was dealt a double whammy. First, plant maintenance budgets were cut significantly resulting in little or no upgrade of instrumentation. Second, self-employed contractors fail to up-skill as they often consider training as encroaching into earning time. When time is money, there is little incentive for training. So although the variety, range and capability of process instruments were undergoing a significant growth, the contractors, and therefore the plants, had fallen way behind the new technologies. For one, they were happy to maintain the status quo — if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it — and second, they were in no position to advise the plant owners that ‘there is a better mousetrap out there’. Older instruments were also more prone to failure and took longer to fix, a rather convenient situation for a contractor billing by the hour.

With little or no investment in technology, the plants underperform, are inefficient, high risk and non-profitable, and the venture capitalist wants to exit the business. But determining the value of a plant’s instrument assets prior to the sale is another challenge. Typically, PIDs (piping and instrumentation diagrams) detail all instruments, their tags and functions. But without an instrumentation team, the PIDs are hopelessly out of date. Fortunately, there are some software solutions that can help alleviate this problem, such as Endress+Hauser’s Installed Base Analyst, which can be used to analyse an installed base of process instrumentation to provide a documented inventory.

What goes around comes around. In an often-witnessed 20-year cycle, venture capitalists sell their decrepit plants to experienced companies who then start the process of building it up all over again. Engineers and technicians are hired or re-hired, the department is built up and the management and maintenance of process instrumentation is finally given its due. There is a growing realisation that the outsourcing of instrumentation can be fatal for a process plant.

New technologies

Admittedly, instrumentation teams of today are much smaller. This is partly on account of the new generation of instruments that boast advanced features such as self-checking and predictive maintenance. In fact, if all the ageing instruments in a plant were to be completely upgraded, it is quite likely that the owners will recover their instrument purchase costs in a matter of months, rather than years, by reducing maintenance costs.

Technology can partly alleviate the skills shortage but the industry needs a significant and sustained boost in number of trained staff. There are now campaigns in place to attract more young people into the resources and process sectors specifically, but a larger part of the solution is to use existing employees more effectively — and that means a focus on skills development.

Instrumentation education on the rise?

The good news is that the subject of skills and training is now receiving a high level of attention from state and federal governments, industry bodies, tertiary institutions and industry market leaders. The bad news is, despite the growing recognition of the importance of training, it is not being developed at a sufficiently fast or coordinated pace.

It is ironic that a strong Australian economy powered by a booming resources industry cannot finance the tertiary institutions responsible for outputting the skilled technicians that maintain the process systems and instrumentation. “Interestingly, the financial rewards and attractive career prospects are enticing many qualified electricians back to tertiary studies to secure their second qualification as an instrumentation specialist,” observes Bruce Kendall of the RMIT School of Electrotechnology and Instrumentation in Melbourne.

RMIT is the only Australian institution offering a five-year apprenticeship with dual qualification in electromagnetics and instrumentation. Sixteen Australian institutes conduct apprenticeships in process control instrumentation.

In the last five years, instrumentation studies have also been introduced at universities like Murdoch University and Macquarie University as part of their engineering curriculum. TAFE courses — until recently hopelessly out-of-date in terms of the curriculum and equipment used for practical training — are now being upgraded with help from industry. This is a sign of a trend in the right direction but alone it is not enough to facilitate lasting change.

Attracting new instros

Research and resources need to go into a marketing campaign to promote the technician’s role as a secure, well-paid step on a path to management — a viable alternative to technical careers in IT, automotive design and engineering. For tangible results, this campaign would need to be nationally coordinated and heavily promoted over at least a 12-month period.

Finally, apprenticeships in general must be made more appealing. As concluded recently by the Living Standards for Apprentices report, government now faces the challenge to develop workable measures for attracting school leavers into the apprenticeship path.

Industry participation

Truly addressing the skills shortage problem will require a concerted effort from industry and the Institute of Instrumentation Control and Automation (IICA), working in partnership with the public sector to devise strategies and put them into action. For the IICA, a voluntary organisation, it would mean seeking help from government for staffing, funding and strategy implementation.

In the short-term, skilled workers, like electricians and plumbers affected by the construction downturn, could be convinced to re-skill for instrumentation. A two-year TAFE course would qualify them in an industry that is growing and has a desperate need for technical expertise.

Long term, the challenge to industry is in evolving to attract new technicians to the field by becoming Generation Y’s career of choice, providing attractive pay rates and more acceptable ‘PlayStation-friendly’ work environments. Industry should be looking at technologies that look after themselves — self-diagnostic devices, measuring technologies that do not require frequent calibration, and consumables like pH electrodes that are easy to replace. Digital communications (HART and Fieldbus) should be used to commission and troubleshoot.

Companies winning the battle for skilled professionals attribute their success primarily to their initiative in helping to grow the skills of the industry. An example is Endress+Hauser’s initiative with RMIT. The company has made contributions in instrumentation, documentation for training materials, service and repairs, and technical instruction.

“Endress+Hauser’s material and non-material contributions over the last two years have benefited the school enormously, particularly the students in their practical training,” says Kendall. “Recently, we have observed that industry demand has never been greater. Career prospects have never looked brighter. Yet we continue to struggle for the resources required to train the technicians we need,” he adds.

Conclusion

Manufacturing today recognises the major contribution process automation and instrumentation makes to plant efficiency, profitability and productivity. It is in our best interest to ensure qualified technicians are available to meet this growing need. Acknowledging the importance of the issue, and helping to provide the knowledge and technology to assist in training, is inevitably a responsibility of the instrumentation industry, which is best placed to understand the instrumentation skills required in process plants, now and into the future.

 

*John Immelman is managing director of Endress+Hauser Australia Pty Ltd.