Passing the Wrench: How Utilities Can Beat the Approaching Retirement Wave

The number most often quoted about the utility workforce is that 30% to 50% of employees are eligible to retire. That range has been repeated for about fifteen years, and it traces back to research that projected the loss over a five-to-ten-year window, not five years. The more recent figure is lower. AWWA's 2025 Utility Benchmarking Survey puts retirement eligibility at 21% of water utility employees within five years, against an average vacancy rate of 9%.

Whether the right number is 21% or 40%, the planning problem is the same. Those employees aren't line items in a staffing plan. A good share of them are operators, and what they know is not written down anywhere.

What Actually Leaves with the Operator

A retiring operator takes the certification and the years of service with them, and those are easy to replace on paper. The harder things to replace fall into four groups:

1. How the system behaves. Which pump runs rough when the wet well is low. What the plant does after three days of heavy rain. Which valve has to be exercised in a particular order or it sticks.
2. Why things are the way they are. The workaround installed after a failure nobody recorded. The reason a setpoint is where it is, when the design documents say something different.
3. Judgment on when to deviate. The procedure says one thing. The operator knows the conditions under which it should not be followed, and what to do instead.
4. Relationships. The vendor who answers the phone at night, the state inspector, the neighboring system that will lend equipment.

An older Water Research Foundation study found that retiring utility workers had spent an average of 24 years at the same utility. That is 24 years of the first three items accumulating with no one asked to write them down.

Why the Procedures Manual Doesn't Capture It

Most utilities have standard operating procedures, and most of them are accurate as far as they go. They describe the normal sequence. They don't describe the exceptions, because the people who wrote them were the same people who handled the exceptions without thinking about it.

This is usually the first thing a new operator finds out. The manual works until the day it doesn't, and on that day the person who knew what to do is no longer there to ask.

Step One: Find Out Where the Exposure Is

Before any documentation project, rank the positions. For each one, ask two questions: how close is the person to retirement eligibility, and is the knowledge held by one person or several?

A position with three operators who all know the same things is a low risk, even if all three are close to retirement. A position held by one person with no backup is a high risk, even if that person is 15 years from retirement. Most utilities find the high-risk list is shorter than they expected, which makes the work manageable.

Step Two: Capture Knowledge While the Person Is Still There

There are three approaches that work, and they work better in combination.

Structured interviews. Have a second person, ideally the likely successor, interview the operator on a set list of topics, and record it. The interviewer matters. An operator describing the job to a colleague skips the same things they skip in the manual. A newcomer asks the obvious questions that expose them.

Walkthroughs at the asset. Record the operator walking the plant or the system and explaining each piece of equipment: what it does, what goes wrong, what the warning signs are. A transcript of the walkthrough, tied to the equipment ID, is more useful than a narrative document.

Written exceptions log. For a set period, the operator records every time they deviate from the written procedure and why. After six months, the log is a list of the procedures that need revision.

Step Three: Put It Somewhere People Will Find It

Documentation that sits in a shared folder under a file name only the author understands is not documentation. The records should be searchable and tied to asset IDs in whatever maintenance system the utility already uses, so the information shows up when a work order is opened for that equipment.

AI tools can help with part of this. They can transcribe the interviews and walkthroughs and produce a first draft of the procedure. What they can't do is tell whether a draft is correct. The operator has to review each one, the same way a controller reviews a reconciliation drafted by someone else. A draft that reads well and is wrong about a valve sequence is worse than no draft.

Step Four: Build the Overlap into the Budget

The most effective transfer method is also the most expensive: the successor works alongside the person they are replacing, for months, not weeks.

That means paying two people for one position for a period. It will show up as a payroll variance, and in a regulated utility it will need to be explained in the budget and, depending on the jurisdiction, in the rate case workpapers. It's a cost that is easy to cut because the benefit never appears as a line item. The failure it prevents is the one that doesn't happen.

An overlap period works better with structure:

1. Paired shifts first, with the successor observing.
2. Reversed roles next, with the successor running the shift and the retiring operator observing.
3. A defined sign-off at the end, where the retiring operator confirms the successor handled a specific list of situations.

Apprenticeship programs fit into this. A formal program with a state-recognized pathway gives new hires a route to operator certification while they are learning the specifics of your system, and gives the experienced operator a defined role as mentor rather than an informal obligation added to the workload.

Step Five: Consider Keeping Retirees Available

Some utilities bring retired operators back part-time or on call for a limited period. The rules for this vary. Pension plan restrictions on post-retirement employment differ between plans, and the answer for a municipal system may not be the answer for a cooperative. Check with the plan administrator and counsel before offering it to anyone.

Questions a Board Should Ask

For board members and commissioners, these are the questions I'd want answered:

1. Which positions have a single person holding critical operating knowledge, and who are they?
2. For each of those positions, what is the retirement eligibility date?
3. Has anyone been designated as a successor, and are they working alongside the incumbent now?
4. Is the overlap cost in the current budget, or does it assume a clean handoff?
5. Where is the operating knowledge recorded, and who has reviewed it for accuracy?

If management can't answer the first two, that is where to start.

The workforce numbers will keep getting revised. The planning doesn't depend on which one is right. It depends on identifying the people, capturing what they know, and paying for the overlap while there is still someone to overlap with.