In September 2024, the HEET team, in collaboration with the IGSHPA and Geothermal Drillers Association, graduated the first class of students of the Pilot Geothermal Drilling tutorial.  

Before early summer 2024, all seven individuals hadn’t considered employment opportunities in the ground source geothermal industry.  After graduation, these students were empowered and ready to work. The program aimed to develop new hires who could operate safely and competently as entry-level employees to work around a drill rig and in the loop field. They understood their roles, responsibilities, and expectations to start at entry-level positions with the opportunity to progress as they hit milestones.  The 80-hour program gave the drilling industry precisely what was demanded - excited, nontraditional individuals prepared to start a career in the geothermal drilling industry.  

The Pilot Geothermal Drilling Tutorial approach was designed to recruit and diversify the construction and drilling industry with professionals who could work within their community.  The tutorial aimed to empower these individuals to join the industry, gain satisfactory employment, and recruit others into the ground source geothermal workforce. To learn more about the inaugural pilot drilling tutorial course from student selection to curriculum and onto graduation, please read the TheDriller.com article, Graduating The New Geothermal Workforce.   

Blending in a New Workforce 

Six months after graduation, one of the seven graduates is actively working at a well-established geothermal drilling company in New England. The other six students have chosen to find alternative work closer to home and wait for geothermal job opportunities to start in their communities. One student is contemplating a move to the Chicagoland area, where many active projects and companies are seeking new hires.  The tutorial program successfully developed students primed for work. However, the industry, although optimistic, was not prepared to employ these individuals.  Over the past few years, the geothermal industry has presented numerous initiatives stating, “We want to hire locals and train them to become professionals on projects in their community.”

I believe that statement will one day be invaluable once we break beyond our segmented goals and collectively work towards the widespread acceptance of ground-source geothermal projects, leading to standard implementation.

The industry needs a new generation of skilled workers to progress our goals, and that workforce wants that progress to impact their community.  The industry's shift to empower fully dedicated geothermal drilling companies capable of taking on large projects came with both positive and negative consequences. These dedicated companies invested in equipment and employed a larger workforce to complete projects.  That dedication required those companies to take on every project that could support their investment in the geothermal industry.  

When we asked these great companies, “How do we increase adoption and acceptance for ground source heat pumps?” “They always reply, "Give us more contracts to win and we will buy more equipment and hire more people.”  

The downside to fewer than a dozen large companies bidding on all the major projects and capable of hiring more workers is that they tend to focus on areas where the current boom is happening.  This is not unlike the mining or oil and gas industry mobilizing to the boom and leaving before the bust.  That is why the current geothermal driller workforce has been predominantly utilized to work away from home.  These individuals are conditioned to be away and enjoy drilling boreholes, completing projects, and moving to new locations multiple times a year.  These drillers and laborers have embraced travel and dealt with the stress it causes in life outside of drilling.  We call it a “young individuals’ game” because they have yet to make commitments and establish roots.  Sadly, the transient lifestyle is less desirable today for recruiting, training, and developing new individuals joining the industry.  We must realize that family-sustaining careers blend financial stability with family-emotional stability at home.   We need to meet the needs of individuals excited to work with us by promoting ground-source geothermal projects that are active in the places they call home.  

Training & Retaining a New Workforce  

The demand for an empowered, educated, and invested workforce extends beyond the recruitment issues of the construction industry. At the end of 2024, there were approximately 9 million open jobs that required various skills and competency levels.  The entire construction workforce consists of 8.25 million Americans.  The Pilot Geothermal Drilling Tutorial started the process of recruiting, screening, and developing ideal candidates for geothermal companies.  The graduates completed the program with a comprehensive understanding of their roles and responsibilities, enabling them to become productive employees. However, once these graduates are hired, they require company onboarding and training to retain them.  To develop these students into productive employees, drilling companies must provide on-the-job training programs with milestones and defined timelines for promotion.  The foundation for milestones begins with a company handbook that outlines its mission, vision, and culture.  Next, milestones are built upon the company’s safety program, standard operating procedures, and risk assessments for all tasks, from start to project completion.  An effective training program requires these documents to be continually updated and refined whenever deficiencies arise.  Establishing company SOPs fosters a team of employees working within the same plan and goal, ensuring efficient project completion.

Beyond building a solid company playbook, the training program must encompass the entire process, from field technician to driller. They must be able to study and learn all the steps of a project from start to finish. 

In the training tutorial, we promoted two common themes above all others: safety awareness and successful project completion. Everyone's goal on site is to complete daily and weekly goals, leading to on-time project completion.  Next, new hires must be provided with simple project checklists that clearly outline project goals and keep them on task.  Finally, an effective on-the-job training program will assign a mentor or coach empowered to share knowledge with the new hire.  Ideally, employers will encourage employees to start a field journal to document their project experience.  Their ability to journal now will develop the mindset to document their expertise and become reliable drillers.  Additionally, journaling will help document the company's future SOPs and best practices.  

The New Normal 

The industry needs more to hit our 2030 goals and, ultimately, 2050 NetZero goals! We need more equipment than what is built today. We need more people to join the industry and establish careers in ground source geothermal. We need more project starts, from residential to commercial to community thermal networks. Every piece is tied to the other; we cannot progress without solving them together.  The term “New Normal” gained strength during the 2008 financial crisis.  Ironically, all our scaling and hiring issues are deeply rooted in the 2008 crash, when the construction industry laid off 50% of its workers, and equipment manufacturing slowed the production of stock units that were in preparation for the next boom.  This is the new normal for the geothermal industry, which is currently underway. We have experienced a significant impact on social and economic incentives for NetZero.  Now is our time to find the path to overcome these issues and create a self-sustaining industry not dependent on federal incentives.  Our 21st-century “new normal” will align our net-zero goals with the individuals who will start as new hires and, by 2050, be the subject matter experts and champions to take us beyond.