This Energy Insights study explores and documents the aging-workforce problem in the U.S. utility industry, with a specific emphasis on the problem of aging engineering and technical staff in the energy delivery line of business. It highlights specific utility aging-workforce examples and presents best practice strategies for addressing the aging-workforce issue. Additionally, this study explores the role that information technology, especially computer-aided design (CAD) and geographic information system (GIS) applications, can play in helping energy delivery businesses cope with the aging-workforce crisis.

The purpose of this study is to give utility companies an overview of the aging-workforce issue and to help utilities develop effective business and IT strategies for coping with the aging-workforce problem.

"Utility companies should realize that the aging-workforce problem also contains an opportunity to significantly change the way business is conducted," stated Rick Nicholson, vice president of Energy Insights. "Strategies being developed by leading utilities are based on the premise that technology can be deployed to support process improvement and business innovation in ways that require substantially fewer staff to serve the same number of customers or produce the same amount of energy, at the same or higher levels of reliability and safety, at the same or lower cost."