How to manage the talent shortage in US offshore wind projects

In March 2021, the Biden administration announced a national target to deploy 30GW of offshore wind power capacity by 2030. It's a bold target from what is essentially a standing talent.

In response, more wind projects have started to take shape across the US. But as a relatively new sector, there are limited skills and experience in the US. It’s different from the UK and Europe, where there is a 15-20-year history of people working in offshore wind.

Estimates say as many as 62,000 workers will be needed on the road to 30 GW by 2030. That’s just a hint of the scale of the challenges that lie ahead in resourcing for such ambitious targets.

Let’s look at the challenges and how a project-based MSP solution and contingent workforce can help meet them head-on.

Multiple challenges for a new industry

Offshore wind farms don’t just spring up out of nowhere. So, there will be more than just engineers needed to meet the 2030 target. Before any energy is produced, ports will need to be developed as a jump-off point for installation. Not to mention the vessels that will go back and forth to build and service those ports – which must all be Jones Act compliant.

All of this demands a huge search for talent. The 2030 target's primary scenario results in 77,300 workers employed in offshore wind, or jobs induced by offshore wind activity, by 2030, and more than 135,000 by 2050. That's a lot of skilled staff to find, so an organized appraoch will be essential. 

Large-scale ventures need oversight and flexibility

Clearly, these are huge projects. That means they’ll typically be developed by joint ventures rather than individual companies. While joining forces makes sense in terms of splitting the levels of investment required, it can make it challenging to get full oversight on spend, compliance, and other key manpower metrics.

A Managed Service Provider (MSP) solves that problem by showing all the relevant real-time data (and none of the irrelevant data) across the full project – so everyone is clear on what’s going on.

That level of detail can make a huge difference for projects that can span multiple years. It's also a real help in making sure that talent stays on the project and doesn't disappear at the first slowdown - with the right oversight, those workers can be transferred to another area of work to utilize their skills and keep work moving. 

Global reach can unlock talent supply

If the skills needed to launch these projects don’t exist in the US, they will need to be brought in from more mature windfarm industries across the UK and Europe. 

However, finding those skills won’t necessarily be simple – unless you have a connection. Which we do. Lots of them, in fact. TRS Workforce Solutions has more than 15 years’ experience finding contingent workers for offshore wind farm projects, so we know the sector and how to find talent.

Our experience tells us that this is not new – the oil boom of the 60s and 70s saw waves of workers from the North Sea relocate to work in the Gulf of Mexico due to the similarities of their projects. We expect a similar influx to gather pace around the growth in offshore wind projects.

We help you tap into transferable skills

Of course, the migration of talent from other countries cannot fill such a huge gap. There will need to be homegrown talent. 

While the skilled workers required for the offshore wind projects are not readily available here in the US, companies can look to other industries for skills transfer. Oil and Gas are obvious candidates, but there will also be skills to utilize across construction, infrastructure, and more. 

Our range of cross-industry contacts means we can spot the best opportunities for projects, bring in the skills they need, and get things up and running with minimal training. 

So many projects pushing for the 2030 target come with a great deal of competition. Lateral thinking will be needed to fill all the required roles.

Our new project tool offers even more

In Europe, we were the first company to implement an MSP program for an offshore wind project. We know how these projects work and we’ve already seen the common pitfalls and easy gains.

And we’ve now made things even simpler with our ONEMSP solution. This provides a project-centric talent acquisition strategy, delivered by TRS recruitment teams and niche third-party supply chains – to find the talent nobody else can. 

You’ll get a dedicated team of experts managing contingent workers across the full project lifecycle – with everything implemented in weeks rather than months. And in such a competitive market, rates get pushed up by the lack of supply relative to demand. We can help make sure you pay a fair market rate for top skills.

Essentially, your project-based contingent workforce is managed through one simple solution – and on such complex projects, who wouldn’t want to simplify the recruitment process?

Ready to source the contingent workforce for your project? Talk to us today.