In 2018 efforts resulted in the passing of the Perkins Reauthorization which provided $billions in funding for CTE (Continuing and Technical Education) followed by a number of additional funding bills that provide for skilled trades, amongst other technical skills. The Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (SMRP) played a large part in getting the bill passed with multiple visits to the White House and Congressional and Senatorial staff. Right now there is a push through partnered organizations such as the National Skills Coalition (NSC) for expansion of other programs including PELS grants for qualified certificates, which could potentially include the Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional (CMRP) and Certified Maintenance and Reliability Technician (CMRT), including qualified training programs. This follows NSC’s victory pushing through the JOBS Act – with the PELS grant, it is not an expansion, but tapping into remaining funds as the grant program funding is not fully utilized each year, being the next goal.
The concept of CTE and related programs is not aimed just at technical programs, but also at skilled trades including nursing and even cybersecurity. In 2018, I had the honor of representing small business and SMRP in a congressional panel on funding for cybersecurity professionals following several years of representing skilled trades impact on cyber at NIST and other presentations in my role as chair infrastructure, smart grid, and cybersecurity for SMRP. Across the board we are lacking key infrastructure, utility, skilled trade, manufacturing, service and other professionals and were on the way to closing the gap. In 2016, when I wrote the first article related to the impact of maintenance and reliability, especially IoT devices, on cybersecurity (following a meeting with Chris Schepis, former Sub Committee Staff Director, House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security, a one hour face to face nightmare of what was going on with manufacturing and cyber) one of the primary ways that adversaries came after organizations was through open maintenance devices and contractors (SMRP Solutions Magazine Cybersecurity Article – MotorDoc LLC). Yet, such training was not included in skilled trades training – a cause I pushed for while I continued in that position at SMRP. Now there are complete conferences surrounding IoT devices and cybersecurity following some massive and dangerous conditions by larger adversaries. The days of small groups of aggressors have passed and now nation-state organizations have increased the sophistication of such attacks from traditional to brute force to the use of machine learning and AI.
There has been an increase in attention to internet based professions that carried with the distributed expansion of corporate networks during the Covid pandemic. Exposure increased dramatically through unsecure networks, untested and untried communication systems, and an increase in aggressors. There was also another impact of the concepts surrounding what was termed essential workforce during the two years of pandemic policies: an attempted forced transition to work from home. This went along with a number of companies who invested in the development of technology for ‘work from home,’ with the consideration that employers would look to the ‘new normal’ being a work-from-anywhere workforce based on office staff. With one commercial asking if you know where your employees are and ‘it doesn’t matter,’ a number of concerns arise including such things as are your employees working on your tasks? Or, how many jobs are they working? To responsibilities such as work area safety, workman’s comp, and other legal/ergonomic concerns. These were issues that were of concern before the pandemic that are percolating in the background again.
In 2006, we presented a white paper on skilled workforce in the 21st century (Skilled-Workforce-in-the-21st-Century.pdf (motordoc.com)) in collaboration with ReliabilityWeb. This was based on the understanding in the 1990s that there would be a skilled workforce gap that would hit a tipping point in 2016, which it did. It was also not unexpected that the concepts of fast money through ‘tech’ such as app and game development would draw workforce away from traditional skilled workforce and infrastructure. The result would be a reduction in essential services as many would consider those positions as somehow inferior. To add to the concern are several political and academic concepts including:
- Transition to a ‘service economy’ where the economy would be driven by providing services and software. This included meetings SMRP government relations had with officials that thought there were no existing manufacturing facilities in the USA.
- Physical systems would require no maintenance workforce as everything is becoming ‘self healing.’
In the case of the first point: no economy can survive as a pure service economy. Real product, mining, forestry, agriculture, transportation and energy are required in order to provide a basis for economic strength. While these base industries are not seen as interesting as compared to the attraction of sitting at home on a computer they are essential. In order for infrastructure to operate to allow people to survive, in addition to the base industries, the ability to manufacture from base materials, maintain assets and produce products and basic needs is essential. This became apparent during the pandemic as production and maintenance personnel continued to work in order to supply, via transportation infrastructure, basic sustenance, in addition to perceived needs. During 2020, pretty much all we would see on the road as we travelled to help keep infrastructure operating is other service vehicles, tractor trailers and trains moving equipment and essential personnel around. Finding open gas stations or places to eat, on the other hand, was more than challenging.
In the second consideration, I’ve read the academic articles on ‘self healing’ systems. Some of these do exist as temporary stop-gaps until components can be repaired or replaced. However, no automated systems exist that self-rewind an electric motor, replace burned out PC boards, self-replace or self-repair transformers, self replace or repair valves, or replace the parts that self-heal as a bridge to repair, and we can go on. These functions still require human interface into the foreseen future.
In some upcoming posts I will be discussing my impromptu interviews with several essential workers based on conversations struck up during travel or casual conversation within industry and infrastructure. A few things of interest are that traditionally exciting jobs that would have people on waiting lists in the past cannot be filled and people are transitioning away from them. In another case, aging infrastructure poses one of the most significant dangers to sustained capability let alone any future growth – people tend not to realize where their work from home devices are powered from. Finally, there is a mass concept that someone else will do the ‘dirty work’ while people live in the media/marketing promoted utopia presented in social media and television.
