There is a crisis developing in the critical facilities labor market. The available pool of qualified and experienced talent is not keeping up with the demand. The crisis is occurring pretty much across the board, from professional engineers who design critical facilities to the trades that build them. It includes the operators who run these sites and the maintenance force who keep them running. And it is impacting the architectural and engineering (A&E) firms, the general contractors (GCs), the subcontractors, the equipment vendors, commissioning firms, and in the end, the owners and facility management firms as well.
This labor shortage is not a surprise. We have discussed this for years and it has been the topic of many presentations at critical facilities venues like DatacenterDynamics, 7x24 Exchange, iMasons, and AFCOM. We have predicted it, watched it unfold, and are now observing the effects. It is predicated on some obvious “knowns” including the following: