Technical training plays a foundational role in ensuring workers have the skills and knowledge needed to respond to a wide range of situations and to provide safe and reliable gas delivery for every customer. How that training happens continues to evolve. Embracing the latest technologies and emphasizing real-world training environments, a new breed of learning centers is raising the bar for engaging workers and instilling technical proficiency.
The UGI Learning Center in Bern Township, Pennsylvania, opened in September 2021 as a way for the utility to centralize training while improving training quality, consistency and volume, according to Vice President of Environment Health Safety Joe Kopalek, who oversees technical training.
The main learning center building offers classrooms, lecture halls and labs devoted to construction and maintenance, safety, service, and meter and regulation training programs—all tailored to UGI’s service needs, with innovation built-in throughout. For example, one of the highlights of the safety lab is a driving simulator featuring data based on Google Earth. “We can actually put a person in the simulator and have them experience driving in the exact area where they’ll be working,” Kopalek said.
That’s meaningful, he explained, because “there’s a big difference in terrain across the state [of Pennsylvania] and between the rural areas and big cities.” He pointed out that some urban areas have very narrow streets, which can be a problem for drivers who aren’t used to maneuvering an F-550 crew truck through them. In addition, Kopalek said, “We have mountainous areas, a lot of unpaved roads. It’s really useful for drivers to learn how to handle these areas in the simulator.”
And then there’s Responders Ridge, an expansive outdoor area with a simulated neighborhood of townhouses with paved and unpaved roads. “We have gas pipe throughout, so we can put live gas into the pipes and then trigger a series of preset leaks,” Kopalek said. “People can go out in the field with the equipment they would actually use. We can observe them doing a leak investigation and repair, record video of their experience and then talk with them about it. We have a fire school there as well; we can set five different gas fires and train employees on the appropriate PPE and how to extinguish them safely.
“I believe we have over 50 outdoor scenarios we can run and about 30 indoor scenarios. Of course, we’ve got all kinds of sensors inside the buildings, along with huge ventilation fans, in case we need to automatically evacuate the air in the inner part of a building. So, it’s very safe. Finally, we have a control building next to Responders Ridge where an instructor can oversee and control everything using an iPad.”
The campus also includes a welding shop and outdoor instruction areas for firefighting, pipe corrosion and protection, and backhoe excavation.
A comprehensive training center like this does not just happen overnight. “When we began developing the Learning Center project, we formed a cross-functional internal team,” said Kopalek. “We had representatives from technical training, engineering, the measurement-regulation group and our corrosion group; a welding instructor; and a couple of people from operations management,” along with input from union leadership.
He especially credits the support of UGI’s leadership throughout the process: “This project has received overwhelming support from our leadership team, including UGI Utilities President Hans Bell and UGI Corporate Executive VP Bob Beard. Hans has been involved very deeply in the design. It’s been extremely helpful for us to see how much support he gave this project.”
The team brainstormed what people would want in a new facility, then toured other gas distribution companies to see how they managed technical training in their facilities. “We took what we thought was the best from each one and tried to make it even better in terms of our own specific needs,” Kopalek said.
Although UGI’s Learning Center is only in its first year, Kopalek already is looking ahead to what’s next for technical training. “Going forward, I’d like to supplement our training with people I’m calling ‘field mentors’ or ‘field evaluators’ who would be spread across the company,” he said. “These would probably be union employees who have enough experience to be able to provide guidance. Their sole purpose would be to go out with the field crews and provide on-the-job training support. That would be in addition to the classroom and hands-on training occurring at the central training center.”
“Our previous training department consisted of just a couple classrooms in one of our service centers,” recalled Scott Edgerton, director of operations support at New Jersey Natural Gas. Safety Town, the company’s new learning center in Howell, opened in late 2021.
Like UGI, the company launched the project by forming a multi-departmental team—including union leadership—that brainstormed training needs and visited a variety of other utility training facilities. Those conversations and visits enabled NJNG to come up with the best-in-class training scenarios they wanted to feature at their own facility, along with a list of the kind of training equipment to install and a rough estimate of the required capital expenditures. According to Edgerton, the new facility “represents the next step in our safety philosophy of having comprehensive and ongoing training throughout our employees’ careers."
The facility is named Safety Town because it features a constructed mock town. “It’s as real as we can make it,” Edgerton said, with home-like structures with gas flowing to them and different types of meter sets to represent the various scenarios field crews and first responders would experience. “It will even have sounds of kids playing, dogs barking, sirens—while still being a safe environment for training. We’ll have cameras and microphones feeding into a command center, so instructors and trainees will be able to watch an employee go through a scene investigation. Some of this training will include local fire and police as both observers and participants.
“We’ve also scaled down a mock NJNG system from transmission pressure all the way down to distribution pressure, served by an air compressor capable of delivering up to 350 pounds of pressure into various lines, regulator stations and meter sets,” Edgerton continued. “We’ll have underground vaults, with different devices inside—such as regulators and valves—so our employees will be able to hands-on train on a live system of 60-pound air pressure.”
Augmented reality/virtual reality technologies will enable workers to train safely for more dangerous situations. “We’re developing AR/VR training classes for everything from locating a gas main to leak-scene management, along with other classes that we’ll be able to use to put our trainees in specific scenarios without putting them in jeopardy,” Edgerton said.
Ideally, all new hires, not just field employees, will spend time at Safety Town to learn about NJNG’s safety culture. “Then, depending upon an employee’s job classification and the qualifications they need, they’ll go through different training scenarios at Safety Town,” Edgerton said, including dispatcher and gas-control training. “We’ll also have regular refresher training. We have about 350 field employees, and at any given point in the year they’ll cycle through Safety Town at least once, if not multiple times, depending on their work group.”
“Everybody here is excited to have a facility like this,” added Vice President of Energy Delivery John Wyckoff. “Our training staff in particular is very excited about the new building—not just because it’s new, but because of some of the capabilities we’re going to have. For example, now we can even do excavation training, which was never possible before at the old training location. Even though we’ve been doing some VR training over the last couple of years, we’ll have the space to expand on that as well. We’ll be able to accommodate all types of learning among all of our employees. Our goal is to take a more holistic approach to training.”
As utilities describe the paths they took to develop their new training facilities, one of the models that is frequently mentioned is PG&E’s Gas Safety Academy. Commissioned in 2017, the academy covers 30 acres in rural Winters, California, and combines classrooms with hands-on experiences. “Our curriculum tries to support a blend of 70% field to about 30% classroom instruction,” said Director of Gas Training Gregory Cocard. “We find that to be the ideal ratio for our learners.”
The academy arose in part because PG&E wanted to consolidate training that had been happening in a variety of satellite offices. But the company also wanted to advance its overall approach to technical training. After five years of operational experience at the Gas Safety Academy, the facility is continuing to grow and change to meet evolving industry needs. For example, Cocard said, “We’ve done a pretty big remodel on the survey field, improving some new actuators and valves to be better able to control leaks remotely from an iPad. We are currently rebuilding the main compressor that runs our flow lab. All of our air for the facility is being reworked. We’ve made some upgrades to our apprentice corrosion program and the associated field.”
In addition, he said, “Our courses are always under review. And we’re always serving our learners, to better understand how the programs they’re attending are meeting their needs. It’s been a process of continuous improvement.”
Cocard acknowledges the role the academy has played as an inspiration for other facilities around the country. “So many companies come to us and tell us they love our facility. And, yes, I would agree: It’s a great facility,” he said. “But I would also say that the meat is there, too. You can tour some facilities where everything looks perfect, but there’s not a lot happening there. Maybe only a handful of students are there on any given day. But when you tour the Gas Safety Academy, there’s a lot of activity taking place at the facility.”
While the main emphasis of a training center will always be the training itself, Cocard believes that where a company chooses to locate the facility also is critically important. “We were looking for a central location, but we needed a location where we could let gas purge, blow-down our leak fields and use lockouts for leak training. Winters is out in the Sacramento Valley, and it was one of the areas that was open to that and was willing to work with their air board.
“Establishing a training hub in Winters transformed the town,” Cocard added. “This little agricultural town absolutely welcomed us. And PG&E has become an important part of the community. Gas Safety Academy was a game-changer for the town.”
Gas Safety Academy has also been something of a game-changer for PG&E and for the other gas utilities that are embracing a similar model of classroom instruction combined with a full range of hands-on, real-world technical training delivered in a safe and fully monitored environment. For example, that model has equipped NJNG to better fulfill what Wyckoff sees as a core responsibility: “To provide every employee with the resources, training and reinforcement they need to ensure safety in all aspects of their job.”
It’s a responsibility that will only continue to grow in the months and years to come.
“The industry as a whole has seen a lot of turnover,” Wyckoff said, “with a lot of experience going out the door as longtime employees retire and new employees come in. So, we want to further enhance our training programs to make sure new employees are brought up to speed as quickly and safely as possible. Not only do we want them to be able to serve our customers and do what they need to do in the field—we want to make sure they get home safely to their families every day.”