Show notes
Dan Pickel joins the Uptime Spotlight today to discuss the NFPA's Wind Turbine Technician I certification program. The program allows technicians to gain standardized recognition for their skills and understanding of safety protocols. With NFPA's extensive background in fire and electrical safety training, the course covers the topics wind turbine technicians need to know and can be taken online.
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Allen Hall: We have a distinguished guest who is at the forefront of developing professional standards in the rapidly growing wind energy sector. Dan Pickel is the Director of Certification and Accreditation at the National Fire Protection Association. Today, Dan will be discussing NFPA's groundbreaking Wind Turbine Technician I certification program.
Which addresses the critical need for qualified technicians in our rapidly expanding wind energy sector. With projections showing a demand for over 500, 000 technicians globally by 2027, this certification program couldn't come at a more crucial time.
Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining light on wind energy's brightest innovators.
This is the progress powering tomorrow.
Allen Hall: Welcome to the program.
Dan Pickel: Thanks for having me. I'm really appreciative to be here today.
Allen Hall: It's great to have you because there's so many questions about this new certification and we decided to just go to the expert and find out. So, you know, obviously the wind energy sector is growing at a tremendous rate.
And with that comes issues about finding qualified technicians, and the new certification program is trying to address that, correct?
Dan Pickel: Yeah, so we, we developed the certification program, and I know we'll get into the, the meat of it later on, but it was meant to address that issue where there are, there's a lack of, uh, knowledge and skills for individuals that are entering the, uh, the industry as a wind turbine technician.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. You see, you hear that from a lot of service providers, right? Rather it's blade repair, torque and tensioning construction. We're at the point in the industry where we're, we're, we're starting to just, I know this is for lack of a better term, but like grabbing warm bodies and training them up as fast as we can and throwing them out there.
Well, what, what that ends up doing is it kind of shoots us in the footlong run because you end up with cost of port quality issues, you know, other, other safety issues and things on site, let alone the technical knowledge. Yeah. Uh, that's needed to advance the, the wind sector here, especially in the United States.
Dan Pickel: Yeah, definitely. I think there's, we've spoken to, uh, some of NFPA's customers in the past and their push is to get people to right trading. They want to make sure that their new employees have all the tools they need to be successful and to be safe out in the field. And they were struggling because there are some other training options out there.
Um, they reached out to us about getting 70E training for electrical safety, but they were finding that wasn't enough. There were still some issues on the field. They were telling us about some really unsafe conditions that were Caused by people just being unskilled and, and not knowledgeable in terms of what they should be doing.
So that was when we really started to dig into the idea of developing a certification for entry-level wind turbine technicians, which is what we ended up doing.
Allen Hall: So that lack of a. standardized approach or some sort of label that's applied to technicians, like they're qualified to be here, that really affects two ends of it.
It affects the company that is hiring them, but it also affects a technician that is competent because they kind of get grouped into the larger pool where there's sort of a mixed bag of, of technician qualifications.
Dan Pickel: Yeah. And that's, that's where certification. Can really be a game changer for individuals.
So if you look at two different candidates for the same job, um, you know, same education, same training, same experience, but one of them certified, I think what that shows is that there is a, um, that person invested in themselves. So they apply for the program. They take the job. You know, took whatever training they needed to, they studied for the exam, then they passed it.
And certification exams are meant to be pretty rigorous, so it's, they're developed by subject matter experts related to the actual job role. So if you look at those two individuals, they will, who should I, should I hire? Most employers are going to go with the person that invested themselves because that's a, you know, a predictor of success.
Allen Hall: So let's, let's break this down a
Program is relatively new. I think I first heard about it this summer. And what from the industry drove you? Was it just an industry consensus? Was it, uh, industry resource groups that were saying, Hey, NFPA, you do a lot of certifications. You're the leading body, particularly United States, for this. We need you to develop something.
Or how did this really come about?
Dan Pickel: I get emails and calls all the time from people with ideas for certification saying this person or this group of people don't know what they're doing. We need a certification. So at that point, we look into the business case. It's what's what's the industry? What's the role maturity?
You know, um, do we have any connection to that industry? As well, because NFPA works with fire life and electrical safety hazards, is this something that makes sense for us? In a lot of cases, it doesn't. When we're looking at the wind turbine technician role, uh, there's a lot of, you know, electrical issues, um, electrical shock issues that we are hearing about.
Um, there's some fall safety, there's PPE issues, there's hydraulics and mechanical systems and, and a lot of those align with what NFPA does, its mission. So we looked at that and we thought, this makes sense. Is the role mature enough? And from what we could find, it was. So we talked with subject matter experts about this, and ultimately we invited people to, to join our certification advisor group.
Now that's a group of subject matter experts. They're primarily based in the US, but, uh, several of them were based abroad. And, you know, we, we met with them to talk about what, what does this thing look like in terms of role? So we had a role delineation to determine what is exactly done by people that perform.
And that involves a pretty robust job task analysis and a number of other steps to come to a, uh, you know, formalized exam blueprint, which is the basis for the exam.
Allen Hall: Oh, wow. Okay. So who were some of the participants in this? And obviously a lot of the wind turbine, uh, Operators, and obviously the manufacturers, are not based in the U.
S., so there must have been a lot of differing inputs into that advisory group.
Dan Pickel: Yeah. So we have a, we have a, uh, a program overview that lists all of our, uh, CAG members, or the Certification Advisory Group members. Some came from GE, some came from Vestas. A lot of them had been working in the U. S., but then also worked abroad, and they traveled a bunch, so, and they'd worked at different companies, so they were, you pretty knowledgeable about what the different, uh, you know, manufacturers were doing, what the different installers were doing, and what, what maintenance companies were doing as well.
So we, we were really, we benefited from their expertise quite a bit when developing the certification program.
Allen Hall: Oh, that's interesting. And the assessment that is performed to really determine competency, there are, from what I can see from the website, and if you haven't visited the NFPA website, you should visit it and just put in wind turbine technician and it'll pop right up to the page.
Wonderful site. There's a lot of good information there. There are really four general areas that the comprehensive assessment is looking into. Uh, mechanical systems, hydraulic systems, electrical systems, and then sort of working at heights in general safety. But when you look at the distribution here, there's a lot about general safety, which is a little alarming.
We should have that locked in already.
Dan Pickel: We should, yeah. So the way that it works is, so we, we work with our subject matter experts. We come up with this job task analysis. So it's, what are all the behavioral things? What are the tasks that someone needs to perform to be competent in a role? Okay. Thank you.
So they put this list together and then what we do is we've sent it out as a validation survey to anyone that's in the wind industry that works as a wind turbine technician. And they answered two questions in the survey for each of those tasks is how frequently do you perform the task and how critical is it?
Now we use that as a way to understand. How much of the exam should be devoted to specific sections? And when we got the results of the survey, we saw that a lot of individuals were saying, you know, on the, on this final don't, uh,