Simulating A Cure For Brain Drain

Much has been made of the gap in knowledge to come when the water industry’s aging workforce reaches retirement. With advances in simulation training software capable of getting new employees familiar with plant processes, it may be an analog fear in the digital world.

As members of the baby boomer generation retire, industries across the country are facing the challenge of substituting them with a motivated and skilled force of younger replacements. In the water sector, the Water Research Foundation (WRF) and the American Water Works Association (AWWA) have been the vanguard for this looming need. The two jointly sponsored a public report released in 2010, the  Water Sector Workforce Sustainability Initiative , which took a deep dive into labor statistics as they existed then and remains the most comprehensive forecast of the issue.

Per the report, the average age of a water utility worker five years ago was 44.7 and the average wastewater worker was 45.4. Workers in both sectors typically retire at 56. By 2020, the researchers predicted, between 30 and 50 percent of the water workforce could be retired.

There’s a lot of speculation about how best to fill the labor gaps and prepare young talent for taking on water jobs. A major concern in such a specialized field is that as tenured workers leave, knowledge of operations leaves with them, a phenomenon known as “brain drain.” But there may be hope for bringing the newbies up to speed by making use of one rapidly advancing digital field.

A Solution In Demand
EnviroSim Associates, based in Ontario, Canada, provides simulation software for wastewater process engineers. Its software suite includes BioWin, a wastewater process simulator that mimics the procedures of an entire plant; PetWin, a simulator customized for petroleum wastewater treatment that includes an industrial activated sludge digestion model, four biomass components acting on sulfide and sulfate, and four adaptable components modeled on processes using ethylbenzene, phenol, benzene, and toulene; and BW Controller, which packages the other two models with the chance to experience a range of advanced process control scenarios such as the need to set dissolved oxygen based on reactor ammonia concentration or to use pH measurements to adjust air flow.

Christopher Bye, senior process engineer with EnviroSim, has seen interest in the company’s wares trend up as plant processes become harder to grasp.

“Demand has increased steadily over the years, driven by wastewater treatment plants becoming more and more complex,” he said. “With this increased treatment complexity come more interactions between different components of a treatment plant. BioWin enables designers to be aware of these interactions and look at options and strategies for dealing with them. Over the years, we have seen BioWin move from a tool used by early adopters to something that now is considered to be a necessary component in every process engineer’s toolkit.”

There’s also Hydromantis, another simulation software provider headquartered down the street from EnviroSim (which, I’m assured, is purely a geographical coincidence). Its tools address both the drinking and wastewater side of the industry. There are WatPro, which predicts water quality to simulate plant operation; ODM, for online disinfection management; GPS-X, a wastewater treatment plant simulator that can aid design and optimization efforts; CapdetWorks, which can project capital and operating costs; Toxchem, for odor emission reporting and modeling; and SimuWorks, the “flight simulator for water and wastewater treatment plants.”

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Taxonomy

• Water
• Technology
• IT