For engineers and other skilled workers with experience in the stormwater industry, this could be a good time to go looking for a new job. On the other hand, difficult times could lie ahead for stormwater department managers and human resources specialists who are trying to recruit for their jurisdictions or consulting companies. Basically, in most areas of the United States, it is a seller’s market for people with the right set of skills.
Looking Outside the Industry
“We were looking for an experienced person to work in our stormwater utility. I had a posted salary starting at $57,000 per year and ranging to $61,500 if they had a professional engineer [P.E.] designation, and I couldn’t find any takers,” notes Brant Keller, Ph.D., director of public works and utilities for the City of Griffin, GA. “We have found that it doesn’t matter what we offer in the way of salary because we are competing for bodies against the consulting engineering firms, and they are eating up anyone out there who is qualified and looking for a job. It was the same when we tried to find someone to handle our geographic information systems [GIS]. They have all been absorbed by private industry. To attract the right people, you would have to offer salaries so high that it would put the pay grade system out of sync.”
Keller, who is very outspoken on stormwater issues and a self-proclaimed renegade when it comes to the water business, blames his profession and the educational system for much of the shortage in trained stormwater professionals. “Outside of Colorado State University, there are not a lot of colleges or schools out there that offer curriculums in stormwater management,” he says. “I have been giving presentations around the country on this since 1994, and I like to use the analogy of the leisure services industry. I took my first degree in leisure services, and back then a leisure services director was a coach. But as leisure services evolved, colleges such as Georgia Southern and Indiana University started to develop curriculum around leisure services so that you could get a degree in administration, outdoor recreation, and other specialized areas of leisure service delivery. You didn’t have to be a physical education major any longer, as academia finally started offering curriculums that would give people a well-rounded education to work in leisure services.
“In the stormwater discipline, I say, “˜We don’t have to produce only engineers.’ Colleges could develop core courses including but not limited to hydrology, the sciences, communication, business management, environmental law, and other areas that would help produce well-rounded people for our business. We know what a P.E. is, but outside of that, we don’t have a certified professional classification program that we can build into a job description, and that has to develop before we solve our labor shortage.”
Keller came on board with the City of Griffin in 1992 when he accepted a position in the public works department for the city of 23,500 residents, located 30 miles south of Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport. “At that time, we needed funding due to a number of flooding issues and federal compliance issues, so we developed a stormwater utility as an enterprise fund dedicated to stormwater management,” he says.
Today, the city has three of these funds: one for stormwater, one for wastewater, and one for water. The stormwater utility now employs 15 people, including Keller, who adds that National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Phase II regulations have helped fuel the growth in the department. Although population density is one of the thresholds where NPDES Phase II hits, other indicators such as water quality also come into play. He notes that there are other factors that can push a smaller city into NPDES Phase II status. “We fall under Phase II because of our density,” he explains. “We have 2,000 people per square mile, and the magic formula for not having to be under the Phase II regulations is 1,000 people per square mile. Our location also played a role in our NPDES designation because we are in a highly urbanized area close to Atlanta, and the vital watersheds around us and Spalding County, which is the county we reside in, fall under Phase II.”
The shortage of qualified applicants to fill job openings, coupled with the rapid growth the city of Griffin is facing, has forced Keller to find other ways to fill jobs. “We have started looking for people from other industries who have experiences in areas that can be applied to our job requirements,” he says. “We look at people’s skills and how trainable they are, and then we train them. We use the Kolbe Index/Instinct Test, which is available online for $49.95, and it tells me how well a potential applicant will complement our mission and how their skill set fits our overall management team.”
Developing a Utility in a Growing City
Despite the difficulty of finding qualified people, Pat Collins, P.E., the city engineer for North Port, FL, in Sarasota County, says he has been fortunate to fill several technical positions last year and says the city will be looking for additional people in 2006 as it sets up a separate stormwater utility. “Stormwater is the responsibility of the Public Works Department, but the Engineering Department has assisted in getting funding from the governor’s office to help Public Works set up a stormwater utility,” he explains. “The city will be looking for some key personnel who will be able to help us get the support we need from the community for the utility, and help us determine the levels of service that the utility will need to offer. We will be hiring a new stormwater manager or administrator as early as possible in fiscal year ’06–’07, as we want them to be part of the decision-making process when it comes to setting up our stormwater utility. We would prefer having them in place right from the start rather than setting up the program and then bringing them in to run it.”
Although Collins concedes it can be difficult to attract people to city government jobs because of the higher salaries employees can command in the private sector and the consulting business, he says there are benefits to working in a municipal environment, and he encourages people to look at these. “A lot of people are getting hired by the consulting companies and private enterprise, and we just can’t compete with them in terms of salary,” he says, “but what we can offer is a stable work environment that doesn’t tend to fluctuate with the economy. You also get lots of opportunities to be involved in the critical decisions that ultimately shape–and ideally have a huge positive impact on–the region where you work. If you like helping people, you will love municipal or local government work. Good customer service is what working for government is all about.”
Collins, who has worked for several different cities as well as in the consulting world, has been with the City of North Port since late 2004. He believes North Port has a “huge stormwater program ahead” because of the way the city was originally developed. “North Port was developed by the General Development Corporation [GDC], which was a development company that originally developed thousands of small lots for retirees. Their plan was to sell them to retirees from the northern parts of the country who wanted to retire to the warm South. Unfortunately, their development plan was not necessarily sustainable from a fiscal perspective. Between 1959, when the city was incorporated, and 1975, GDC platted 70,000 small 10,000-square-foot lots and constructed drainage systems to drain them that included 84 miles of canals. If built to its maximum capacity, the city would have held 250,000 people, but GDC went bankrupt, and many of the lots sat dormant through 2000. In 1999, you could have bought one of these lots for the back taxes of between $2,000 and $3,000. Today they are worth 10 to 15 times that amount.”
As home prices and demand increased in Florida, the platted lots in North Port went up in value. Today, Collins says many of the homes are worth over $300,000, but because of the way the city was originally zoned by GDC, there was not a lot of commercial area to serve local residents. Consequently, local residents must leave town and spend tax dollars for goods and services in neighboring communities. “The business model that GDC set up didn’t work, because without businesses to share the burden of the cost of infrastructure and services, the residents were left to pay all of the costs,” he notes. “Consequently, most lots are not on a centralized sewer system but are on septic. Because of this, we are concerned about water quality, which is one of the things our new stormwater administrator will be looking at.”
For 2006, Collins estimates that the City of North Port will spend approximately $1 million on its stormwater program, with $450,000 of that coming in the form of matching grant money from the governor’s office. It is money the city will need as it continues to grow at a rapid pace. “In 2005, the city issued 4,000 residential building permits; in the two previous years, we issued 3,000 residential building permits per year. When you use the census figures of 2.48 people per household, that is a population growth of approximately 7,000 to 10,000 people per year for North Port.”
A Diversity of Skills
David Phillips, an environmental unit specialist with Oklahoma City, OK, says the city recently had to fill four positions. “We didn’t have any problem with people finding out about the positions, but having qualified people apply was a different story,” he says. “Our turnover has been fairly high lately. We’ve had one person retire, two people went to new jobs, and one opening was a new position within the city. Two of the openings were recently posted and we had 54 applicants–20 of these people with the qualifications necessary to get them through to the next round in the hiring process.”
Phillips says the stormwater function within Oklahoma City resides within the Department of Public Works and employs between 26 and 28 people. Areas that fall under stormwater include the environmental water-quality section; a household hazardous waste facility for the recycling of used motor oils and other household and consumer products; industrial inspections and audits to monitor for any pollution that may originate from an outside area of a business; and construction erosion inspections and audits, which relate to new development and redevelopment construction projects within the city limits. With this many functions falling under the stormwater umbrella, Phillips says, the city looks for a variety of skills when hiring. “When we receive applications, we look for any environmental background; a knowledge of best management practices; construction knowledge; any degrees, certification, or licenses; and previous experience with NPDES.”
When recruiting, the city, which has a population of approximately 500,000 people (well over 1 million people including the surrounding area), advertises in the job section of the local newspapers and on the city’s Web site. Jobs are generally open to internal and external applicants. “With a city of this size, we have approximately 4,500 employees, so we generally get a lot of internal applications when we post a job,” adds Phillips, who has experience in a number of areas and started with the city in 1993 after working in the oil field and then conducting environmental testing for the city. “We also get job applications through word of mouth, but most of the positions are filled through the ads and postings in the paper and on the Web site. For me, it was being at the right place at the right time and getting in on the initial stages of this program.”
Despite the fact that it can be difficult to find qualified people, Phillips says the city trains all its employees so it is able to keep most of the jobs with its own personnel, contracting out only a few functions. “We keep most things in house, but we do contract out the disposal of hazardous waste, and for environmental analysis we use the services of an outside lab for some of the water testing and analysis. We also contract out street sweeping due to the cost of the equipment that would be required to service an area that covers 621 square miles. It is just not cost-effective for us to purchase the machines that would be required to complete this in house.”
Other functions, such as audit inspections, the cleaning of drains, and even the video monitoring of drainage systems, are performed by city employees. “We offer some very good training programs, and we have several people that are trained and certified to enter confined spaces,” adds Phillips. “Even with the training and the job stability, we still have turnover. We bring people in and they get a significant amount of training—licenses, or go back to school and get a master’s degree—and then they are gone.”
Cities Choose the Services They Need
On the consulting side of the business, Andy Reese, P.E., says consulting companies can play a significant role in helping cities, counties, and other jurisdictions solve the labor shortages that many stormwater managers describe by providing services when needed.
“As the number of stormwater utilities grows around the country, finding directors for these utilities will become more difficult,” says Reese, a vice president with AMEC Earth and Environmental Inc. in Nashville, TN. He says this is especially the case with smaller cities and counties that now have to adhere to NPDES Phase II regulations. “As the demand grows in these smaller cities for stormwater-quality programs, permitting, TMDLs [total maximum daily loads], and GIS requirements, there will be more of a need for consultants to step in and help. We are already seeing this somewhat on a temporary and permanent basis. For example, for Fairfax County, Virginia, we have assisted in planning and management of the stormwater program for a period until senior staff could be found. We can supply a pool of resources for one-time studies, management support, and so on, and that can be enough to support the city or county initially. Then we can step away when the need diminishes. We can expand and contract much quicker than a city can, because we can move our resources around to where they are needed.”
Reese says even for larger NPDES Phase I jurisdictions, some functions are just not cost-effective to perform in house. “Some high-tech applications such as modeling, GIS applications, and real-time analysis may sometimes be better done by outside consultants rather than a city or county employee,” he explains. “It is not always necessary to have a full-time staff member look after these functions. By using a consulting company, [the city gets] a highly trained professional and the necessary equipment for only the hours they are required. They don’t have to pay this specialist for eight hours a day, five days a week, but can bring them in as needed.”
The City of Nashville, TN, is one of AMEC’s clients, and Reese says the company has completed designs on more than 900 projects for the city. “We manage their construction program, meaning we do everything from answering and investigating complaints, to prioritizing the projects and streamlining the design-build process for them, to GIS-based project tracking, and a comprehensive public and political-leader involvement and education process. They have a fairly large staff, but they farm this service out at this time for staff and perhaps cost efficiency. It allows city staff to concentrate on other important things. When they are out of construction dollars, they don’t have to lay people off; they just don’t do the project until they have a new budget to work from.”
Thomas R. Decker, P.E., a senior associate with the Morristown, NJ, office of Edwards and Kelcey, says his office also gets called in when jurisdictions need expertise in a specific area. Edwards and Kelcey offers engineering, architectural, planning, and construction services and has some 900 employees nationwide. Decker’s office specializes in transportation issues, and some of the major, long-term clients of the New Jersey branch include the New York and New Jersey Port Authority, New Jersey Transit, and the New Jersey Department of Transportation.
“I typically get involved with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection land-use programs, and this includes working with the new stormwater management regulations that came into effect in 2004,” says Decker. “With the enhanced regulations for new construction, we have to look after a number of functions such as addressing recharge and water quality on our projects by evaluating total suspended solids impacts and proving that stormwater from new pavement areas and disturbed existing pavement areas has been properly treated.”
For companies such as Edwards and Kelcey, Decker says, it is important to stay on top of new regulations and technology. “We satisfy our clients’ needs with our professional staff. Occasionally, we will team up with another firm that complements our experience, or we will train one of our employees in the area that is required.”
Decker notes the company still faces a shortage of engineers. “Many top-notch students seem to be choosing other careers, such as computer-related fields,” he says. “We participate in career days at colleges, but it has been tough to find people because so few students are going into engineering. We have found that offering internships helps as we hire students in the summer. This helps them out as they gain valuable experience, and it helps us out as it provides us with extra staff for a couple of months every year. When it comes to hiring permanent, well-qualified, full-time employees, we generally find the best way to find people is through recruitment ads and industry networking.”
Contracting Out Large and Small Projects
Steve Anderson, a principal engineer at the Seattle office of environmental engineering firm Brown and Caldwell, says most of the work his office does is either in response to a request for proposal for specific technical expertise, or through on-call services contracts. “Our Seattle office has a large concentration of senior technical resources. Consequently, while we do quite a bit of work in the Puget Sound area, we also support Brown and Caldwell projects in other western states such as California, Oregon, Idaho, and Utah.”
Anderson says most of the 15 people in his office’s water resource group are engineers or water-quality scientists. “Our clients tend to hire us for specific technical expertise they may not have in-house, such as complex hydrologic or hydraulic modeling, or for projects for which they do not have the staff capacity. We enjoy working with both large and small municipalities. With our smaller municipal clients, we frequently interact with decision-makers such as public works directors or city engineers and can develop a comprehensive understanding of their issues. With our larger clients such as Pierce and King Counties or Contra Costa County we are often able to participate in or lead cutting-edge technical work. The combination of a variety of client and project sizes and types can be one of the most satisfying aspects of consulting.”
When looking for new employees, Anderson says it is a combination of recruiting activities that puts bodies in the office chairs. “For entry-level positions, many consultants maintain relationships with the engineering departments at local universities or their alma maters. Senior-level positions may be more difficult to fill, but the candidates are typically our peers in the industry and are commonly already known to us. Consequently, participation in professional associations and networking is a critical form of recruiting.”
Despite what many municipal stormwater managers say about losing employees to consulting companies and other private enterprise organizations, Anderson says it doesn’t always go that way, and he notes that consulting may not be for everyone. “In the water resources consulting arena, one often manages multiple small to midsize projects. Schedules can overlap, resulting in closely spaced deadlines. Smaller projects can be more difficult to run than larger ones due to the challenges of managing tight budgets and expectations. Consequently, a city or county stormwater program or public works department may be a better fit for someone seeking a predictable workload.” When people do make the switch, it is often out of a desire to work on a greater diversity of assignments or to continue to grow and develop a particular technical passion or interest area.
Scott Tobiason knows this firsthand. He joined the Seattle office of Brown and Caldwell in November 2005 as a principal engineer after spending 10 years with the Port of Seattle. “The driving factor behind my switch was the chance to work with more diverse issues and settings. In my new position, I am able to be a technical specialist and I can have a certain level of technical focus.”
