Chemical Engineering November 2012 - 19

Top five U.S. states
for average chemical engineering salary
TABLE 1. MEAN SALARIES FOR
Basic chemical manufacturing
R&D services
U.S. CHEMICAL ENGINEERS BY INDUSTRY SECTOR.
$99,440
Resins, synthetic rubber and artificial fibers
Petroleum and coal products
Paints, coatings and adhesives
Natural gas distribution
Support services for mining
Company management
Source: BLS
natural gas industries, the American
Petroleum Institute (API; Washington,
D.C.; www.api.org) recently launched
an initiative with the University of
Phoenix (Phoenix, Ariz.; www.phoenix.
edu) to help meet the rising demand
for experienced workers by helping to
develop a pipeline of skilled employees
for the energy industry. " The oiland-gas
industry will need a new generation
of highly skilled employees to
safely develop our country's energy resources, "
says API president and CEO
Jack Gerard. API has coordinated
with industry leaders to provide information
to the University of Phoenix
to help identify where the oil and gas
industry could benefit from additional
training and education.
Retirement is a larger factor
Aside from new capacity, another factor
driving the competitive labor market
for engineers is the replacement hiring
needed to keep up with retiring engineers.
Engineers in the " Baby Boom "
generation - the leading edge of which
is reaching retirement age now - had
been staying on the job longer over the
last few years because of the effects of
the economic recession. With the stock
market recovering most of the equity
lost during the recession, that barrier
is not as severe anymore.
Nearly half of chemical workers are
nearing retirement age, and will be
leaving the workforce over the next
decade, Dearth says. We have to find
a way make sure there is a pipeline of
students interested in science, engineering
and math, he adds.
" Replacing an aging workforce, particularly
in the hourly ranks is a significant
workforce challenge, " says Rhodia's
Armstrong. " In the next three to
five years, I will lose a significant portion
of my plant population due to retirement.
This is not easily replaced. "
As personnel leave companies,
they do so with valuable experience
1. Alaska
2. Montana
3. Virginia
4. Delaware
5. Texas
Overall
Source BLS data from 2011
that companies are trying to capture.
" There's a general industry trend toward
younger workers with lower levels
of experience, " Yura says, " and that
introduces new risk factors. "
Knowledge management
Knowledge management, or the ability
to retain company know-how and experience
and expertise despite worker
turnover, is becoming more important
as retirement rates are poised to pick
up over the next five to ten years.
The challenges posed by knowledge
management and transfer have been
evident for some time in the CPI, but
the attention on the issue has never
been higher, and the tools and strategies
available never more accessible.
" Information transfer at the time of
retirement is too late, " BASF's Yura
says. His company's core principle is to
establish an institutionalized knowledge-management
program, and set
up dedicated systems for information
technology, performance reviews, documentation,
and others, as they relate
to knowledge management.
Other methods include retaining retirees
as part-time workers, or as mentors
for younger engineers. Such is the
case at Rhodia's Baton Rouge site, according
to Armstrong. Also, early hiring
incentives can create more overlap
between retiring people and their less
experienced replacements.
Dearth, from Calgon Carbon, says
his company is establishing mentor
programs between older and younger
engineers. Also, the company is enticing
people to return to work in a consultant
capacity after their retirement
to help transition existing engineers
to new roles.
Honeywell's McDougall says that in
many areas, his company has experts
with extraordinary depth in their field
and replacing that knowledge will always
be a challenge for Honeywell. " A
sound and ongoing to business practice
for us is to take steps to ensure that
key technologies do not rely on a single
person, " McDougall says. " We focus
on single points of failure - those
places where just one or two employees
understand a process or technology
- and then work with those employees
to document their knowledge
using the most effective and practical
approach. " For example, job shadowing
may work in some instances, while
formal, written documentation fits
other situations, he explains.
Job mapping
To help facilitate knowledge management,
make training more effective,
as well as help employees visualize
their career path, a method developed
by Sai Ranade, of RWD Technologies
LLC (Houston; www.rwd.com) may be
a useful tool (see Chem. Eng., April
2011, p. 54-58).
Known as a competency-mapping
framework, the method systematically
creates grids showing the minimum
levels of cognitive competencies, or
knowledge, required to qualify a person
for a task, as well as other functional
skills that allow the person to excel.
" Many companies have not specified
their own jobs, " Ranade says, explaining
that his method for visualizing job
tasks came out of a consulting arrangement
with Ecopetrol S.A. (Bogota, Columbia;
www.ecopetrol.com). Ranade's
method presents a universal, visually
based framework for job analysis, and
provides a method for establishing
clear relationships between job tasks,
training and career paths.
Among other things, the framework
method " offers a path to standardize
training, thus saving time and money, "
Ranade says, because " learning interventions
become more targeted. " The
model can help companies identify the
specific job functions that bring value
to the company.
■
Scott Jenkins
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHE.COM NOVEMBER 2012 19
$104,140
$91,610
$104,040
$91,930
$157,940
$141,320
$130,250
Hardware and supplies merchant wholesaler $125,340
Scientific and technical consulting services
$114,550
$99,500
http://www.api.org http://www.phoenix http://www.rwd.com http://www.ecopetrol.com http://WWW.CHE.COM
Chemical Engineering November 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering November 2012
