Skilled people in the water industry - information for the future

The advent of national water qualifications triggered significant changes to the distribution of skilled people who are responsible for the operation of water supply and wastewater networks and treatment plants. Most water industry employers have recognised the need to employ qualified people. The aging population, the lack of popular awareness of career opportunities and changing technologies are just some of the reasons that have been put forward in response to employers who have experienced difficulties with employing the right people.

To-date there has been no attempt to formally collect, analyse and present data that describes the current employment patterns for water and wastewater treatment plants as well as reticulation networks in New Zealand. By combining and filtering a number of existing data bases that are currently used to support training services and to record treatment plant locations and treatment processes, and then linking the data to a GIS platform, there is now the ability to generate wide-ranging enquiries about employment patterns in the New Zealand water industry. Data fields also include employee ages, qualifications, communities served, community sizes and employer locations. Some distinctive patterns have emerged from this analysis to provide insight into future employment needs for the next 20 years. For example, there are alarming implications for the staffing of treatment plants arising from an ageing workforce that has an age profile not expected in the rest of the NZ workforce until 2050. Other outputs related to geographic distribution of skills are graphically presented in the paper.

Further use of this data should allow a concerted industry approach to pre-empting severe skill shortages through the development of location based training, more focused development of formal career programmes and planning locations that would derive maximum benefit from skill sharing by employers.