For more information, contact Mike Baugh, 620-792-9325, baughm@bartonccc.edu.

March 22, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Story by: Michael Dawes
dawesm@bartonccc.edu

Fourteen months ago the workforce bottom dropped out for Keith Frank. Two years into a promising career as a railroad conductor, working in South Dakota, he was one of 5,000 employees let go by the company, which was clobbered by the recession.

“I didn’t anticipate the bottom falling out,” said the 46-year-old Frank. “The railroad company I worked for was promising everything would be rosy; that 2009 was going to be a banner year for them. Next thing I know, I’m unemployed; it was like one day to the next.”

Finding no work in South Dakota, the Franks moved back to Bison, where the family lived before moving to the Mount Rushmore State.

Last spring, Frank went to the Great Bend Workforce Center to answer a job advertisement and he learned about the Workforce Investment Act grant opportunity for displaced workers. Barton Community College was offering a three-month training course in its Natural Gas Distribution and Transmission Program, specifically for displaced workers. He enrolled in the 33-hour certificate program and three days after completion, he landed a job as a measurement technician with Hays-based Kinder Morgan Inc.

“They said what actually got me hired were two things, the program at Barton and my attitude,” said Frank, who began his job search almost immediately after starting the program. “I beat out 78 other applicants to get the job. They knew since I was proactive in looking for a job before I graduated that I was serious about getting into the field.”

Frank admits he knew nothing about the field of natural gas before he entered the program, but the rigor and training he received from the certificate program gave him a solid basis to begin his new position.

“The program gave me a good structure of the language,” said Frank. “I didn’t come into the position blind. Kinder Morgan understood that I had no background in the field, but that I had some new education in it and I had the right attitude.”

Kinder Morgan is one of the largest pipeline transportation and energy storage companies in North America. Frank works in a 75-mile radius around Hays, measuring the different stages down the gas lines, taking care of sites, valves and regulators along the path.

Barton Preps Natural Gas Workers

“I’ll tell you what, I’ve done some interesting jobs, but this is by far the best job I have ever had in my life,” said Frank, who has served in the U.S. Army and Air Force, worked as a security guard and worked for many years as a graphic designer, in addition to his brief stint as a railroad conductor.”

As Frank discovered, the natural gas field is booming with opportunity for skilled workers. Barton’s Natural Gas Transmission and Distribution program director Mike Baugh cites sources that state Kansas will lose approximately 3,500 skilled employees in the natural gas field to retirement in the next few years. In 2008, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that more than 50 percent of the utilities industry workforce was age 45 or older, signifying that many of workers will either retire or prepare to retire within the next 10 years.

“If you like being a welder, or an operator, if you like driving a truck and checking gauges, if you like working with computers, working in the control room, or being a heavy equipment operator, there’s something available for everybody’s work taste in this field,” said Baugh.

An aging workforce also offers long-term employment opportunities for traditional-age students, willing to invest in a few months to a year of training.

Twenty-year old Jobey Black graduated from Barton’s associate degree program in Natural Gas Transmission and Distribution last May. He completed a three-month internship with Midwest Energy Inc., an electric and natural gas utility that operates in central and western Kansas. The internship turned into a full-time job for Black last August. He works on a gas construction crew in the Hays area. The crew puts in and services gas lines, from yard lines, to service lines, to transmission lines.

“It’s different every day,” said Black. “It sounds the same, but you always run into something that’s different. I really like it.”

Black chalks up his good fortune in the job market directly to his experience in Barton’s Natural Gas Distribution and Transmission Program.

“If I would have come in off the street and tried to get this job, I wouldn’t have got it because I wouldn’t have known hardly anything about the gas,” said Black, who is originally from Oberlin. “It’s not something that you just pick up somewhere else along the way.”

It’s not uncommon for those trained in natural gas transmission and distribution to cross into other fields that utilize similar skill sets, Baugh said. One student from the summer session completed the 16-hour certificate and was immediately hired by a wind-energy company, he noted.

“A lot of the controls used in the control of natural gas can be used in any other energy industries, such as oil and wind,” explained Baugh. “And a lot of manufacturing and technical jobs will use the same type of technology that we teach in our program.”

Barton Preps Natural Gas Workers

Jobs associated with the training program are high-paying jobs. Baugh said some area natural gas companies are hiring entry-level technicians for $35,000 a year. After a few years of employment, they can expect to make upwards of $50,000 a year, he added. The average wage for an energy technician in this area is $70,000 a year, he stated.

“That average includes technicians who have been with their companies for 30 years or more, so that’s a skewed number, but it goes to show the industry has very, very good wages,” said Baugh.

Great Job! – Keith Frank went from being a displaced worker to finding the best job he’s ever had in a matter of three months, after enrolling and completing the 33-hour Natural Gas Distribution and Transmission certificate at Barton Community College. “One of the instructors in the program was a former vice president with Atmos Energy out of Kansas City,” said Frank. “He focused one of the classes on preparation for hiring and said we needed to get our resumes out there because the hiring process in the natural gas industry can be slow. I took him at his word and I started looking early on. My process from start to finish was two and a half months to get hired.”


Working World – Midwest Energy employee Jobey Black stands in front of the College’s Midwest Utility Pipeline Training Center, where he spent much of his time as a student in Barton’s Natural Gas Distribution and Transmission program last year. Black was among seven of the first students to graduate from the newly formed program last May. Barton has a longstanding partnership with the natural gas industry. For more than 20 years, natural gas companies have relied on Barton to provide continuing education and hands-on training for employees in the industry through the College's annual corrosion control seminar. An advisory committee representing pipeline companies and municipalities, including Midwest Energy, Northern Natural Gas, and Atmos Energy, helped develop the curriculum for the program.