Hiring for a trillion dollar investment
The gargantuan, trillion-plus dollar investment in infrastructure in 2022 will soon reach a major bottleneck; public agency staff to plan and design it. Solving this staffing problem will require a change in the way agencies recruit, hire, and retain people. It is imperative that resource-strapped agencies move quickly to staff up so taxpayer cash can be converted into the assets that will deliver the jobs and long-term benefits promised by the IIJA and the Inflation Reduction Act. Robinette Consulting looks to support agencies in thinking differently about hiring by:
Developing a staffing strategy to help agencies win the talent war.
Identifying which positions should be filled by variable (consultants or contract) labor and which positions should be filled by agency staff.
Recruiting from outside of industry and creating plans to expedite domain-knowledge transfer through on-the-job and classroom training.
Identifying opportunities to automate or improve processes to free up existing staff.
Helping boards understand the staffing needs and the change in hiring culture and processes.
Future blogs will explore how agencies can think differently about hiring. Today’s post focuses on the backdrop, the setting for the upcoming decade of hiring challenges agencies face.
Backdrop
2022 has brought about unprecedented funding for public infrastructure. The IIJA (Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) and the Inflation Reduction Act, when taken together, include lofty goals to:
Improve our nation’s transportation, communications, and water infrastructure
Provide benefits to the environment through reduced pollution, cleaner energy, and investment in climate resiliency
Provide jobs for over a million Americans and environmental justice for rural and underserved communities
Together, these two Acts invest around a trillion dollars into our country’s future through programs, grants, and loans. Setting aside concerns about how these investments are paid for, Robinette Consulting supports responsible investments that will benefit future generations.
For this to be a responsible investment, private companies and public utilities will need to think radically different about their most important resource: people.
Converting this fresh cash streaming in from Uncle Sam into assets on the balance sheet of public agencies will be the job of public agency staff and boards. The faster this conversion from cash to assets can happen, the more life-improving and job-creating concrete, copper, and steel infrastructure will serve our nation. A shortened schedule means fewer dollars spent on escalated labor and material costs and reduced soft costs. A quick planning and design period can put a project ahead of other agency’s projects, improving bidding competition and driving down costs.
Most public agencies responsible for developing, operating, and maintaining infrastructure that provide citizens with drinking water, wastewater, transportation, and other public services are already short-staffed. Injecting cash alone into these agencies will not create the infrastructure to improve our lives and secure our future. A portion of this cash will be used to hire agency staff, but agencies face major hurdles to finding, hiring, and retaining staff. The problems are especially acute when it comes to engineers; who have traditionally led the charge for building infrastructure.
Some of the challenges public agencies face in staffing up:
Engineers are retiring from public service at an extremely high rate, taking institutional knowledge and mentorship with them as they leave.
The candidate market has a shortage of experienced civil, mechanical, and electrical engineers in the 10-20 year experience range.
Private companies are offering higher pay and other perks, such as remote working, that public agencies may not be able to match.
Hiring processes focus on specific experience and domain knowledge and are inflexible when it comes to considering diverse backgrounds, aptitude, curiosity, and complimentary skill-sets.
Hiring consultants, the traditional method for dealing with short-staffing shifts the problem of staffing to consulting firms who are dealing with massive backlog and to a business-model better suited to supporting decisions than making ownership decisions.
The staffing problem is not limited to engineers, but the planning and design necessary to advance a project to the construction phase is the first step in converting cash to assets, represents one of the biggest opportunities to drive down project costs, and is a massive bottleneck for agencies.
Staffing the planning and design phase of infrastructure projects removes a major bottleneck. Robinette Consulting can help. Give us a call!
