PLUGGING THE BRAIN DRAIN: OPERATIONS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY WORKING TOGETHER

The Clean Water Act of 1972 resulted in vast hiring of wastewater operations and maintenance (O&M) staff and now many are anticipating their retirement. Wastewater utilities face the challenge of capturing the knowledge of mature staff before they leave (the so-called “brain drain”). Unless this information can be gathered easily, it probably won't be gathered at all. A purpose of this paper is to suggest possible solutions to the brain drain problem by demonstrating a process Brown and Caldwell (BC) has developed to capture the critical knowledge of senior staff before they leave a facility through retirement or job transfer. The objectives of this paper are to define the problem, outline the steps necessary to capture critical knowledge, detail a case history, and provide a live demonstration of the tools used to capture this knowledge.