In this episode of the Oil & Gas Measurement Podcast, Dr. Alek Hutson and Elton Hollis join Weldon Wright to discuss workforce development in the midstream sector. The conversation covers industry–academia partnerships, the challenges of attracting and training new talent, and efforts to create clearer career pathways and standardized training for future measurement and instrumentation professionals.

Midstream Workforce Development Show Notes, Links, and Insider Terms

• Midstream Industry – The oil and gas sector focused on transportation, storage, and movement of hydrocarbons via pipelines and associated facilities.
• Measurement Tech – A field technician responsible for accurate measurement of gas or liquids, including calibration, troubleshooting, and compliance tasks.
• Instrument Tech – A technician who installs, maintains, and calibrates industrial instrumentation such as pressure, temperature, and flow devices.
• Crane and Rigging – Heavy transport work involving lifting and moving equipment, often used in pipeline and midstream construction.
• Logistics – Coordination of people, tools, equipment, and materials required to support operations across the oil and gas industry.
• Pipeline Flow Research – Scientific study of fluid dynamics in pipelines to support efficiency, safety, and measurement accuracy.
• Workforce Development – Programs aimed at attracting, training, and developing workers to meet skill demands in the oil and gas industry.
• Technician Career Pathway – A training and education route that allows individuals to move into technician roles through trade schools, two-year programs, or engineering degrees.
• Blue-Collar Roots – A reference to the hands-on, field-based culture that is foundational to oil & gas work.
• DOT OQ (Department of Transportation Operator Qualification) – Mandatory training and qualification to ensure pipeline workers can safely perform regulated tasks.
• Analyzer Buildings – Enclosed structures that house analytical equipment, chromatographs, RTUs, and related instrumentation at measurement sites.
• RTU (Remote Terminal Unit) – A field device that collects data from sensors and transmits information to SCADA systems for monitoring and control.
• Structurally Insulated Panels (SIPs) – Insulated building materials used to construct analyzer and RTU buildings efficiently and with high durability.
• Gas Measurement Fundamentals – Technical training covering physics, equipment, and industry standards needed for accurate gas measurement.
• Calibration – The process of adjusting measurement devices to ensure accuracy; a fundamental task for technicians.
• Coriolis Meter – A mass-flow meter that uses tube vibration and resonance to measure flow; highly accurate but sensitive to installation effects.
• Ultrasonic Meter – A flow meter that uses acoustic waves to determine gas flow and provides advanced diagnostics capabilities.
• Installation Effects – Mechanical conditions (such as vibration, pipe stress, or turbulence) that impact flow meter accuracy.
• Performance-Based Standards – Industry standards defining required performance outcomes instead of prescribing a specific design or configuration.
• Agnostic Training – Instruction designed to teach concepts independent of any single vendor’s equipment, increasingly difficult with advanced diagnostics.
• On-the-Job Training (OJT) – Field-based training where inexperienced technicians learn by riding along with experienced personnel (“Bubba”).
• Externship – A short-term field placement for educators or students to gain real-world experience in midstream operations.
• Throughput Demand – The required volume of hydrocarbons that must move through a pipeline or facility, influencing workforce and construction needs.
• Measurement Uncertainty – The possible error range in a measurement system; critical for accuracy and compliance.
• Resonance (Coriolis Tube Resonance) – The vibration frequency of a Coriolis meter’s tubes, which can be affected by installation and impact accuracy.
• AGA (American Gas Association) – A major industry organization providing widely used gas measurement standards and technician competency guidelines.
• GCI (Gas Certification Institute) – Training and standards organization specializing in gas measurement; partnering with Lamar University.
• DOT (U.S. Department of Transportation) – Federal agency overseeing pipeline safety regulations, including operator qualification requirements.
• PHMSA (Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration) is responsible for providing pipeline safety oversight through regulatory rule-making, NTSB recommendations, and other important functions to protect people and the environment through the safe transportation of energy and other hazardous materials.
• Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board – State agency funding workforce development initiatives and curriculum planning for midstream technician programs.
• ASGMT (American School of Gas Measurement Technology) is the largest gas measurement school in the United States that is devoted to natural gas measurement, pressure regulation, flow control, and other measurement-related arenas.

Midstream Workforce Development Full Episode Transcript

Weldon Wright:

Welcome to episode 50 of the “Oil & Gas Measurement Podcast,” sponsored by EnerSys Corporation, provider of Muddy Boots, field operations software assisting oil and gas operators to implement accurate and repeatable measurement activities across their entire operation, while also simplifying data collection from the field.

Find out more about Muddy Boots at enersys.com/software/muddyboots

[background music]

Announcer: Welcome to the Oil & Gas Measurement Podcast, where measurement professionals, bubba geeks, and gurus share their knowledge, experience, and likely a tall tale or two on measurement topics for the oil and gas industry. Now your host, Weldon Wright.

Weldon:

Hello. My name is Weldon Wright with FpvPrime Measurement Consulting. I have Alek Hutson, the associate director for CMMS, and we’ll get him to tell us what that is in a moment, at Lamar University, and Elton Hollis, the VP of RT Technical on with us today.

We’re talking about workforce development, alliances between industry, academia, how do we entice new people into our industry? How do we train them? How do we provide the value that industry needs for folks? Thanks for being here today. Alek, let’s start with you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do there at Lamar, and what CMMS is.

Alek Hutson:

Sure thing. My background, I started in the heavy transport industry, mostly crane and rigging, and logistics. Did that for the past 10, 12 years. Started a company about three or four years ago, doing training and workforce development for crane operators and CDL drivers.

Then I made a bit of a career transition and started an academic career. Got my bachelor’s from Lamar University in physics and mathematics, and then went on to the University of Houston to get my PhD in high-energy nuclear physics.

Then I came back to Lamar, did a postdoc in pipeline flow, and ended up transitioning over to the Center for Midstream Management and Science, where I’m working now. This is a research center at Lamar University dedicated to serving the midstream industry.

What we try to do is build partnerships and collaboration between academia and industry. We do that on two fronts. One of them is research, making sure that our faculty are doing research that’s relevant to the industry, and the other one is workforce development. That’s what we’re here to talk about.

We’ve been doing a lot on that front to build collaborations with some of the two-year institutions, like Lamar Institute of Technology, as well as industries and companies like RT Technical, setting up certification programs.

Basically, trying to create an environment where students can come into the industry, either as a technician or as an engineer, and have a pathway forward, and can enter in and out of this education pathway so that they get a well-rounded education, and that so everyone’s speaking the same language.

We’re making sure that our curriculum and that the curriculum we develop is informed by members of industry. We communicate very regularly with an advisory board as well as others in the industry and community to try to understand what their needs are.

Weldon:

Great. Thanks. I don’t know how long we’ve been talking about trying to do something to bring more people into our industry, especially on the measurement side. The first meeting I was involved in that, was probably in early 2020, actually. I’m sorry, early 2000s, actually, shortly after Y2K.

I was involved in a meeting in Houston where the topic was, how do we get new young people into our industry? We had lots of great ideas. I don’t know that any of them have been very successful. We’ve got to start doing something different.

Wrap it around to Elton. Mr. Hollis, tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do at RT Technical, and how you’re involved with this alliance.

Elton Hollis:

Like I said, I’m Elton Hollis. Been in the industry about 28 years now. One of those things where I started out in the civil world working for Mason Construction. Spent about six or seven years there, really enjoyed the field, but when you’re working for your father, sometimes you get to a point where you got to go to work somewhere else. [laughs]

I went and started a small, civil division for a pipeline contractor out of Hampshire, Texas. Got my first introduction to the pipeline world and really started to dig into that time about how the pipeline world was changing and how they were becoming a lot more technical and start integrate into the industrial world we had here in Southeast Texas.

I met some amazing folks. Some of the technical minds that I met there, still some of the smartest people that I know. I was bit with the bug after that. To see the logistics that these guys were dealing with, it was amazing to see blue-collar roots mixed with some high-level thinking.

Right after that, I spent a couple years there and decided to start my own business with a business partner of mine. We got into the training side and the safety side. We started doing some DOT OQ training, which is the most exciting training. Everybody loves DOT OQ training.

It did teach me just how detailed the pipeline world is and how important it is to be specific about what we’re doing. Once I did that, I did that for a couple years and went to work into the industrial electrical field in the office as management and brought in that same mantra of how detailed and how they face the same skills challenges as the pipeline world.

I mixed that with my training background and always try to put that forward in everything we’re doing because we all seem to face the same battle of the older workforce starting to retire and taking a lot of their knowledge with them. That can be dangerous for the young folks coming up in the industry as a whole.

Then I met up with Kasey Taylor with RT Technical. She brought me in and told me what she was doing, taking a small company that was traditionally an oil field services type company. They found a real niche building these analyzer buildings, RTU buildings, out of structurally insulated panels and started building these things turnkey.

You can learn a lot, when you watch a building go together, about how detailed and how specific the client wants you to be. You start realizing just how important the measurement and the flow of this gas is to the rest of the world.

It’s been a fun ride. I’ve been all over. I tell you, never could get away from the wisdom that I saw from those older pipeliners and just trying to really have a passion for spreading that out to the younger folks and letting them know that you can make a ton of money and learn a whole lot of stuff about what’s going on out there.

Weldon:

That is so true. You don’t meet many people that have been in this industry any length of time that don’t have a passion for it. We have friends, we have people that try it and go, but the people that have a passion get ingrained. They just become more and more passionate with time.

On the measurement side, which is what my little podcast is about, like I said, we’ve been talking since 2000 about needing more minds in here. Let’s face it, the reality of the matter is very few people come into the oil and gas industry with the intention of being measurement techs.

Maybe a few with intent on the I&E world in the plants, but when it comes to the pipeline, upstream, the production side or distribution companies, we don’t get many people in the industry that enter it that way.

What happens is we hire an entry-level. Whether it’s roustabout, whether it’s gauger, whether it’s helper, whether it’s ditch digger, we hire people at these bottom levels. They stumble a while. They either look good, or they don’t look good.

If they look good, maybe a manager goes, “Hey. Would you like to come over here and try?” We stick them in the truck with Bubba. No offense to Bubba here on the Pipeliners Podcast.

We affectionately know a Bubba geek here, that meld of technology and just being a good old boy out in the field. Any rate, we put him in the truck with Bubba. He rides around with Bubba for a while.

Then we sprinkle some holy water on him and say, “You’re a measurement tech because you already went through OQ when you were doing something else. We’ll teach you how to turn a valve and one other new thing for OQ.” It’s brought up from the bottom.

One of the things that happens with that is our industry doesn’t have a way of recognizing people that may want to come into the industry with a base level of training in electronics or measurement or instrumentation.

We have trouble paying a bright young guy right out of college that has put in the time and taken specialized classes. We don’t necessarily have a good way of paying him the money he deserves to get into our industry. That all falls into this discussion about these alliances.

Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about what the Center for Midstream Management and Science is doing to facilitate this midstream workforce development program, and how we’re getting there. I’ll let you all decide who’s going to start here.

Alek:

I can start a little bit. A lot of what you’re saying is echoed across the industry. Especially in our Golden Triangle region, we see a lot of people trained for downstream. We have a lot of people trained on refining, but the mentality and the way you go about your work is a little different in midstream.

What they’ll do is they’ll take someone who is trained as a process operator and then throw them into an LNG facility and basically have to retrain them from start.

What we’re trying to do is make our course work a little more tailored to what’s needed specifically in the industry, and then also educate the community and the students coming through these two-year institutions and universities about the opportunities that exist.

One of the things that we’re doing to try to improve the training is, we’re bringing in Gas Certification Institute as a partner. We finalized a contract with them a few months back.

They’re going to start hosting fundamentals courses in gas measurement on our campus, and that’s going to be for people in two-year institutions like Lamar Institute of Technology and some of the other ones around us, as well as our engineers so that we can create this environment, like I said, where you have some of the older generation coming in and educating some of the newer generation.

Then, on top of that, we’re really trying to push for internship programs, opportunities for professors to go on to sites and see the reality of the industry right now.

Weldon: That’s an idea.

Alek:

Externships is a big part of Lamar’s engineering program, as a matter of fact. Just keeping the people doing the education in the loop as well and making sure that they’re communicating with industry as much as possible so that our coursework’s relevant.

A big part of what we’re doing is partnering with two-year institutions. It’s a unique thing that we’re doing. You don’t see a lot of four-year institutions doing this.

One of the things we did this last year, we submitted a grant through the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board with Lamar Institute of Technology, and we received that grant. What that is, is a planning grant that will allow us to identify where the gaps in their training are in terms of measurement techs and instrumentation techs in midstream industry and try to fill those gaps.

We’re hoping to extend that grant into next year as well, and ultimately build a program where students coming from Lamar, from the two-year institutions, can all participate and enter and exit this career pathway as it makes sense for them.

Weldon:

When you say planning, I know a lot of people may look at that and go, “Oh, no. How’s that going to get anything done?” The reality of it is, there’s two great documents out there put together by an industry.

AGA put together an industry that described the required or the recommended training for a measurement tech at three different levels, an entry-level tech, a well-rounded tech, and then a senior technician. That description, while it doesn’t fit every company individually, overall, it’s a great document.

What the audience didn’t know about is I had a computer crisis from an update, so I’m working on just my laptop screen today. If I had multiple monitors here, I’d have up the name of both those documents and talk numbers.

The AGA paper is 220 or 230 very basic hours, up into 400-plus hours that it takes, and that doesn’t talk about OQ. That’s just the technical side of the training, not the operator qualification training. There’s another document out there, put together as a white paper by GCI some years back, that does the same thing for the liquid industry, two separate guidelines.

The reality right now is there’s no college program, there’s no 2-year program, 5-year program, or 10-year program that addresses that. There’s no industry program from GCI or A&M Extension Service or any of those people like that that addresses the same thing.

There’s lots of little bitty individual pieces out there. There’s vendors providing training that is excellent in many cases, but somebody needs to coordinate all that and put all that together, and I hope that’s what you all are talking about doing there, Alek.

Alek:

Yeah. That’s exactly what we’re doing, for sure. Just trying to create an environment where we can bring in all these groups into a single place where a student can get credit for each of these courses they take, and it can all go towards a larger whole.

We’re trying to bring in a lot of manufacturers to do training, because, like you say, manufacturers do some great training, but it’s very specific on their equipment. We have some courses that are more agnostic, and then we’re going to have courses that are taught specifically by these manufacturers.

Weldon:

I’ve got three questions lined up in my mind for Elton, and I’m going to forget them here when I say that. You said agnostic, and that gets me up on one of my soapboxes.

[laughter]

Weldon:

We used to be very agnostic in our industry. Our standards were written that way. We wrote our standards. The recent standards that come out have been around functionality. Our older standards were around performance. How do you exactly build this? If you build it exactly this way, you will have achieved some specific uncertainty and accuracy.

Our standards are changing to performance-based standards because this is no longer a bunch of cast iron and pipe that was machined and an analog pressure transmitter bolted onto it and a couple of pressure gauges.

We haven’t been that way in decades. We are now to very complex equipment, very complex software, and it’s extremely difficult to be agnostic anymore with the diagnostics that are available in our ultrasonic, our Coriolis meters, our analytical equipment.

It’s pretty hard to hold a class that says, “We’re going to teach you about Coriolis measurement, but we’re not going to talk about any one manufacturer’s software, their device.” It’s gotten harder over the years, hasn’t it?

Elton:

Yeah, I think so. I think about it, I was watching football yesterday along with most everybody else, and for a Cowboys fan, it is tough on Sundays.

[laughter]

Elton:

You don’t ever know what you’re going to get. We were talking about that — and you mentioned the AGA — and that’s a heck of a point. It is massive. The documents, the training, it is kind of the cream of the crop for what there is out there.

I liken it to taking a brand-new wide receiver, which is our young guys we’re bringing into the field, and you’re going to immediately start chunking 50-yard bombs to them right off the bat. You can’t build any confidence that way. You know what I mean?

You need a good 5-yard stop and a 10-yard out, and things like that, that’s easy for them to catch. I think that’s what the CMMS board talked about a little bit, is how can we find these medium ground to start training these folks?

You can throw him in the truck with Bubba, and you’re right, he can learn a lot of stuff, but it’s not just learning. They still got to work and make money and take care of other problems that he’s only getting 30 percent learning that day, or 20 percent learning.

I think one of the challenges we talked about when Alek gave me the question was, what can we do to help industry? I said, “Well, ma’am, personally, if we could figure out how to deviate the difference between a true instrument tech and somebody that just knows instrumentation, that would be great.”

Then measurement techs. I said, “We teach these folks, but I wish I had a quicker way to get them the new knowledge that’s coming out there.” That’s been one of the things that I’ve been excited about, is now we’ve got a lot of different avenues and we’re going to have a lot of different avenues for them to go to.

We just finished up ASGMT. That’s a great week of visiting with folks and lots of knowledge and stories there. The classes are good too, but you’re learning from folks that are in the industry while you’re visiting and everything else.

It’s great for a week, but man, we may need to be doing that every day. That’s what I’m excited about, is that, it feels like we have that gap starting to fill up with something, and along with GCI’s help as well.

Weldon:

You say every day, and I agree with that, absolutely. There’s a conflict. There’s a contention in the industry.

[background music]

Weldon: Training people costs money, right?

Elton: Yes, sir.

Weldon: If that guy’s in training, he may be doing some work while he’s learning, but chances are, if he’s working for Bubba, that means that Bubba’s not being as productive as he could that day because he’s slowing down and part knowledge.

Announcer: Welcome to the Oil & Gas Measurement Podcast, where measurement professionals, Bubba geeks, and gurus share their knowledge, experience, and likely a tall tale or two on measurement topics for the oil and gas industry. Now your host, Weldon Wright.

Weldon:

There’s huge money involved in this. To me personally, part of there being so much money involved in what it costs to get people up and running, that makes the industry do something that I have a problem with, and that is, internally within companies, we don’t do a good job about documenting what we’ve trained our people on.

The holy grail for me is if there was some data collective somewhere, some information pool or some data lake of measurement knowledge, where every little bit and piece and parcel that a guy has been through or a gal has been through in their career somehow got chalked up. Then we could generate a report.

We could query a database and say, “Tell me, based upon this AGA standard for a field measurement techs or this other standard for liquid measurement techs, tell me where this person needs work and what they’re qualified for.”

Because when I was on the industry side interviewing those new people, “Oh, you came from DCP.” “Oh, you came from Pioneer.” “You came from…” whatever company it would be.

What I would have to do is I’d have to go, “What was your job title there? OK. You were a measurement tech 2 at company X for four years. I remember that means you’ve seen a chromatograph as you drove down the road one day, right?”

Having that for the industry, to where the industry could be more black and white on what folks have under their belt when they come in as an experienced or at least something above a ground-level tech. What are your thoughts on that, Elton?

Elton:

I think you’re exactly right. It all boils down to money. I know people are scared to talk about that sometimes, especially in the safety, in the training world, because any type of training does, it costs you money.

When you put them out there, I would much rather have that trained individual out there representing my company, and I know the client would rather than have that. I think you’re right, man. If we could have this big information database put together like the rest of academia does.

Perfect example, with the titles. Where you got a measurement 1, 2, 3 engineer, there’s 15 different titles that I’ve heard out there depending on who you work for. I know everybody, they’re like, oh, engineering makes a lot of money and he’s really smart, but sometimes those titles just turn in to be titles.

That’s some of the things that we’re looking at doing is, is saying, “Hey, we do want to track this. We do want to make this a plan for what’s happening.”

I think that’s why the CMMS board and Lamar University look for the grants right off the bat, because when you start something right from the very beginning, people always want to know the cost and the time. Because really it’s cost and cost because time is money.

Weldon: Exactly.

Elton:

I think that’s the way it is with the grants is OK. The first thing they’re going to throw as a roadblock is, we can’t afford to get that done. We took care of that cost for you. Here’s the grants that we have to make this happen.

One of our biggest challenges in our path forward is removing those out of the way. We’ve taken care of the money issue. Can we break it down into two-hour sessions or four-hour sessions, or can we get some online training?

That’s what we’re really poised for and what I’ve seen the guys on the board and at Lamar University working to make it something that can really happen.

Alek:

If I could jump in a little bit, academia is positioned to help in some of these areas. You talk about companies having to spend so much money on training. That’s exactly what academia should be doing, taking care of that, a little bit of that upfront.

You’re always going to have on the job training for sure, but if we can close that gap a little bit, that’s what we want to do. We want our students to go out and get high-paying jobs and ultimately we’re funded by the state. The state’s very supportive of these initiatives.

The state of Texas is investing heavily in workforce development for technicians and two-year degrees. That’s why we were able to pull that grant and why we’ll continue to be successful in getting financial assistance for people that do have that interest of getting into the industry.

Like Elton says, we can remove that barrier for them and then hopefully reduce the cost to industry for training. If we can hit both of those marks even a little bit, we’re starting to do our job.

Elton: Absolutely.

Weldon:

I think a lot of being able to do that, I hate to use the word, but to standardize what different types of training, what different pieces. It is taking that four-page document that AGA wrote for a gas measurement technician and expanding every one of those categories to the level of, what does this mean possibly.

Then tying that back to what are we really giving people in classes, a two-year degree, four-years degree. I know some very, very smart engineers, been around some guys that just awed me over the years.

A lot of those engineers coming out of college, they belong in the truck riding with Bubba though, because let’s face it, in some programs, the overlap between a four-year degree and implementing that to be able to work day one is a long ways away.

Now the difference is, that guy with that engineering degree, when you take him out there and start talking about installation effects on a particular type of meter, he’s more likely to understand what you’re talking about.

Being able to see, oh, I can see how putting that pipe under really high stress coming into that Coriolis meter could affect the residents of the tube. He can see that, but that doesn’t mean in today’s day and age, he knows what a Coriolis meter looks like. Putting those pieces together and link them together.

When I was in the industry in a hiring position, I would have loved to have been in a state where a guy right out of college, right out of trade school could come to me and say, “Hey, I’ve been through this particular program,” and I’d love to be able to look at that and understand what it meant.

Does this mean, hey, is this a guy that can work today? Is it entry-level tech? Or is it a guy that I need to spend one month of training, six months of training, or how do we get to it? That’s what I hope you all are beginning to work on for us, Alek.

Alek:

Yeah, definitely. What you were saying earlier, as far as creating more well-rounded engineers and technicians by getting these guys in the same room is a big part of what we’re trying to do as well.

In crane and rigging, I moved from the field as a rigger and crane operator into an engineering position. I remember just the utter confusion that exists between, someone from the field speaking with an engineer. It’s two different languages.

If we can get those two people in the same room, that’s a big part of what we’re trying to do with GCI and these gas measurement fundamentals courses. We’re going to bring engineers into there. We’re going to bring technicians into there. That way they understand the physics and the mechanics behind how these things work.

They’re all speaking that same language. That’s my hope with these two-year institutions and with our degree plan, is that, we’re going to create recognized credentials that can be seen as useful in the industry.

That’s exactly why we’re trying to communicate with industry as much as possible. That’s why we’re really happy to have Elton on board because he’s done a lot to connect us with industry. He’s been very helpful in telling us what the needs are. The more people we can get in on that conversation, the better we can do.

Elton:

That reminded me of something when you said that about blending those things. At some point, and I’m not going to say where, but used to at some point you’d catch pigs coming through a pipeline in a track hoe bucket.

I hope we don’t do that anymore, but it taught you something. It taught you the power and the pressure that comes through those pipelines and what really happens, or what could happen. You don’t want to lose that.

It’s hard to put that in black and white and put it in on page and get somebody to understand the sheer power of what’s going on. Then you look at what a measurement tech has to have.

To me, you blend mechanical expertise, electrical, IT, and regulatory, it’s not just the hands-on piece. It’s what am I doing with this piece of equipment? How important is this calibration? You break out your laptop and you’re going to calibrate a meter and it takes you 20 minutes, 30 minutes to run through there and get everything situated.

Are you really just following the process or do you understand how important this meter is to the whole process of the piping scheme? That’s one of those things we can’t lose.

That’s why I think it’s so important to standardize this and get us where we can really make this happen, but also not lose that riding in the truck with Bubba and that blue collar roots about what can happen if we don’t understand the real-world implications.

Weldon:

Eldon, I poked a little bit about graduate engineers earlier. Some of it deserved, some of it, maybe not, but on the other side of that training riding with Bubba. One of the things can happen is, if that’s your primary means of training, sometimes you get…you can’t always have your best guy.

Bubba can’t be the one doing all the training. Sometimes it’s Joe and Ke Pete. You may have handed down that training several times. When we get to just OJT and just training someone how to do the steps, there’s danger in that if they don’t understand why are they doing it that way.

That’s where we get this mailed that we need some engineering, we need some theoretical, and that needs to be bolted up with that hands-on, with that operations expertise and that OQ stuff, right?

Alek: I think too, if you have that deeper understanding of what you’re doing, it helps the culture a lot too. It gives you a little more pride in your work if you know what it means and how it works.

Elton:

Absolutely. We see it here at RT. We generally start off our younger folks in our panel shop just because you’re working with a controlled environment and a little slower pace and see what they learn.

Even if they come to us and say, “Hey, we’ve got an LIT instrumentation certificate, it doesn’t automatically mean they know how to bend tubing or they know how to hook up process.” We start them slow.

In the field, you can’t always start slow like that. You definitely don’t get a controlled environment most of the time. It’s great to still have that piece too. I think one of the other things we also have to look at, is the growth pattern for these individuals.

If we start them out as a measurement tech, you also want to tell young folks, and I’ve found it to be the best this way, show them where they can grow. Where does the measurement tech lead to? What’s that next level? What does the money look?

How do we blend that to get into the LNG world and some of the other industrial world we have here in southeast Texas. That way we’re not just telling them, “Hey, now you’re in magic wand. You’re a measurement tech now, and you’re good to go.” It’s also telling them where can they reach after that, I would think.

Weldon:

That’s great. We owe industry and we owe the individual, we owe both of them something. We owe the industry that better level of standardizing the documentation about training. What does an individual have? We owe the individual, especially young folks that.

More and more folks these days are saying, “Hey, maybe a four-year degree is not right for me. Let’s talk about two years. Let’s talk about a trade school.” When you talk about that, we owe them the ability to translate.

If they decide to go to a trade school, they decide to go to a two-year school, maybe they get a little grant help, maybe they get a student loan. We owe them the ability to capitalize or recoup that money that they spent on that.

That comes from the ability to show industry, I went through this training program. This directly tells you how it’s going to reduce the amount of time you have to spend with me on the job to get me up to speed. We need both of those. I’d ask both of you all what are our next steps from here and how does industry help?

Alek:

I’ll start again. For us, we’re going to continue some of the things that we’ve been doing, getting these two-year institutions in the same room. It’s an advantage that we have that being a four-year institution, we don’t necessarily train technicians, so we don’t have to worry about competition.

Sometimes a two-year institutions get a little competitive. What we’re trying to do is get them all in the same room and say, “Hey, we all want the same thing. There is this big need in the industry, and not one institution can fill it.” We’re going to continue to have those conversations.

Like I said earlier, the more people from industry that want to participate in those conversations, that want to advise us, that want to come out, do some training or participate in some training, we welcome that. We’re going to continue to keep those doors open.

Some of the conversations that we’ve had about standardization, I think that you bring up some really good points. That’s something we’re going to have to look into, is how do we standardize this?

What I’m going to be trying to do over the next few months is get a committee together that’s going to steer this program, a steering committee. People from industry, people from academia, both two-year and four-year institutions, as well as some of the companies like GCI. I want to get all these people in a room to start addressing these questions systematically.

Elton:

The board’s doing the same thing. One of the questions we asked is, who else can we put on this board? Who do we need on this board for the CMMS board? I took that to heart when we were at ASGMT. I visited with some friends of mine that worked for Atmos, that he’s about to retire, and I asked him some of those questions.

I said, “Look, if you had an extra two years that you were going to work,” and he almost fell out of the chair, but I was like, “I wouldn’t say you are going to work two more years. Just if you had that much time, and you had the ability to be able to impart some knowledge on people, what would you do for your young measurement techs? What do you think you could do a little bit better?”

He told me a couple of things. He said, “One, you want to tell them folks that they have something to work for and towards because sometimes it’s all about the noise around you, but the other thing we need to look at is giving them knowledge that they can actually chew and swallow at a time.”

He said, “Sometimes when you’re on the job and that’s the only training you have, it comes at you so fast and so hard and heavy that you’re only thinking about pleasing the client.” He said, “I feel like if we had other ways to blend that.”

My point of that was just to try to find those folks that are ready to give that knowledge, and find them, and say, “Look, what can we do to put this together?” Because in reality, the throughput demands that are out there right now, the global competition with everybody fighting for, it’s got the clients…they’re building these things faster and quicker.

You can’t drive down the road in Beaumont, Texas, once you get out of the traffic, and not see pipeline work going on.

I think what I would like to see us do, and what I would like to keep pushing for, is just that real-world application. How we can put it in play and take the knowledge that’s about to leave us and just soak up as much as we can so that it turns into a real-world degree plan.

Weldon: If someone in the later stages of their career, or maybe a brilliant young mind — because we always need new input, right?

Alek: Yes, sir.

Weldon: How would folks interested in potentially becoming involved in the Center for Midstream Management and Science Board, who do they contact about submitting an application, or even finding out more about it, what it’s about? Who do they contact?

Alek: They could contact me directly or the director, Philip Cole. We’re always looking to connect with people. If you go to our website, you can find our emails there, you can find phone numbers there. Reach out directly, and we’ll have a conversation with you.

Weldon: Do you know that website offhand?

Alek: Yeah. Hold on.

Weldon:

We will put this in…

[crosstalk]

Elton: We can hear you typing, Alek. [laughs]

Alek: Yeah. I want to get it right. Lamar.edu/midstreamcenter.

Weldon: Midstreamcenter. That’s pretty easy to remember there.

Alek:

Pretty easy, yeah. We’ll host events as well, where industry can come in and speak. We’re going to have an event next month, October 15th and 16th, where we’re going to discuss partnerships between academia and midstream. We’re going to welcome some people from the local institutions as well as the industry, and hopefully start some of these conversations.

You can always go to our website, see what kind of events we’re putting on, what kind of courses we’re putting on, and then you can reach out to us directly if you’re interested in helping in any way.

Weldon: Thanks a lot. What we’ll do is we do a full transcript of these episodes, and up the top, before that transcript starts, we’ll have contact information on there for people that need to reach out to you or somebody that might reach out to Elton, also, all right? Guys, thanks again for doing that. Any last words or last thoughts before we roll this to a stop?

Elton:

We talked about a lot of good things today, but I think that when people really look into it, they dive into it, and as I’ve worked with these guys at Lamar University, we have to understand that the craft of gas measurement, and it is. It’s a true craft. I feel like it deserves the honor of that.

It’s not just about building better meters. It’s about building a skilled workforce, integrating technology seamlessly while staying ahead of the regulations, and then adapting to this speed.

Sometimes when we’re in the field and that’s the way you work it, you don’t realize how much stuff is progressing and the speed of what’s going on. If you look at the facilities and how fast they’re coming up right now, man, it’s going to start moving a lot quicker. I’m excited about being able to set these standards out there and meet some of these challenges.

Weldon: That was a great way to end this, Elton. I appreciate it. I don’t think you could have worded that better if I’d given you some warning about it. Thank you.

Elton: [laughs]

Elton: I get lucky every once in a while there.

Weldon: Thanks again from both of you all for being on the podcast. This is about our November episode, probably, so looking forward to it. Thanks again, folks.

Elton:

Thank you.

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Weldon:

Thanks for listening, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the podcast. I hope we’ve given you a few things to think about, and maybe you should have some ideas for forwarding training in your organization. Please spread the word about our podcast by telling your boss, your co-workers, and your industry peers.

We’ll have Alek and Elton’s contact information, the Lamar University website address, along with a full transcript of this episode in the show notes on our website, pipelinepodcastnetwork.com.

If you have comments, questions about our podcast, suggestions for topics, or if you’d like to offer yourself up to that podcast microphone as a guest, please send me a message on LinkedIn or shoot me an email at weldon.wright@fpvprime.com.

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