Author: Frank Taaning-Grundholm, Vice President, Global HVACR Sales, ABB

Unlike the musical group Right Said Fred, the pump industry has a hard time saying “I’m too sexy…”. Please bear with me while I elaborate.

Just before Christmas, I was talking to some friends about why several industries are approaching the cliff’s edge. Several of the traditional “blue-collar” industries, such as our very own pump industry, are simply not able to attract sufficient young talented people. As a result, the average age keeps creeping upwards.

By all means, I strongly support that our older colleagues should stick around as long as possible, so we can all learn for their abundance of experience and hopefully also avoid some of the mistakes you’re likely to have made, when you’ve had a long career.

The problem with the age creep however is that our senior colleagues need someone to pass on their experience to and when the average age of a company has passed 55 years, that is obviously very difficult, especially since the distribution of the oldest colleagues is likely not even across all functions. Some functions and unfortunately it appears especially technical support functions and front line sales are suffering from an over proportional representation of older colleagues. When they retire or even worse, suddenly succumb to illness, the knowledge they possess leave the company with them.

Sure the first half of Generation X are hanging in there and filling up the chairs (I’m one of them by the way), but we simply cannot secure the longevity of our industry. We need the Millennials to secure that our industry undergoes a sustainable development, knowledge is transferred and new technologies are introduced to the industry.

The big question me and my friends were debating was: why do the Millennials not want to work in our industry, when it has so much to offer?

As we started sharing our thoughts it became obvious to me that one of the key reason a lot of Millennials are seeking companies like Google, Tesla, Facebook, Amazon and other tech companies has essentially little to do with what they do, but more so how they are perceived in the public mind.

What I mean is, Tesla is an automotive manufacturer, but is perceived as a high tech company working to solve some of the key environmental and traffic issues in the world by electrifying cars and making them drive autonomously. No other car company has this level of hype around them; and several of the traditional car manufacturers are suffering the same challenges as the pump industry, in spite of working to solve some of the same challenges that Tesla is working on.

The thing is we all (OK, a lot of us anyway) want to work in a company that makes great things and strives to achieve the impossible in a world, where things are amok and it seems almost impossible to cope with all the challenges. When there is hype around a company, it simply becomes “sexy” to work there and people are drawn to it, just because of it. If you then cannot get your dream job in the truly “sexy” company you were hoping for, you start looking for related opportunities – and the pump industry is just not up there with the other “sexy” companies of choice; and that’s not really fair.

Some of the really hyped topics in the media these past many years have been:

1. Carbon emission reductions
2. Water scarcity
3. Disaster management
4. Energy savings
5. Sustainability

When I look at our industry, we have all of that and more to offer. Electric motors are consuming more than 30% of all electrical energy in the world and a large part of this is pumps. If we are just looking at the water sector, that’s 4% of all global electricity usage, but with an estimated increase to 8% by 2040, according to IEA.

When we look at the water usage, about 80% of all water in the world is used for agricultural purposes, mostly irrigation; and in several of these installations, the water leakages are more than 60%. So for every gallon of water pumped, only 40% ever reaches the crops on the field. Sure the rest will find its way back into the creek or back to the groundwater, so we can pump it out again, except for that which has evaporated.

We need the young generation in our industry to get out there and help save the world, reduce the electricity used with more energy efficient systems, lower water losses by thinking smarter and deploying new ways of getting the message across. Of course we can all do that and we all know what it takes, but that’s not really my point.

When we open new positions, why do we keep focusing on the core competencies of the engineer, but create no link to the fantastic achievements of the industrial companies working to make the world more livable for people everywhere?

Without pumps, there wouldn’t be any industry in the world. Pumps are at the very heart of every single process. This would happen without pumps:

1. Buildings would get flooded.
2. Wastewater would run in the streets.
3. Buildings would burn down in case of fire.
4. Crops would dry out.
5. We wouldnt be able to produces medicine
6. We couldn’t build wind turbine, solar panels or make bio fuel.
7. Dairy products couldn’t be processed.
8. Bottles couldn’t get filled (we’d miss our beer, wine & spirits)
9. …

You can keep adding to the list, but if ever complete, it is a very long list.

Here’s a couple of the amazing things our industry does:

1. We transport water across continents to make it available where it’s needed.
2. We pump water away from cities faster than a flood can fill the city, to keep our houses safe.
3. We make solar-driven systems to replace diesel-driven system in areas with poor or missing power supply, securing food production in rural areas of developing countries.
4. We make sure there’s always water available to put out a resiential or commercial fire.
5. Deliver chemicals in the exact doses needed for creating every kind of medicine known to man.

And yes, by the way, we also:

1. Pump all the wastewater to the wastewater facility for cleaning, rather than returning it directly to the ocean or river.
2. Secure there is the right pressure in the whole city for everyone to enjoy fresh clean water for washing, cooking, drinking and swimming.
3. Pump the water through the thousands of amazing fountains all over the world.
4. Irrigate the field, to secure the food production in the world.

All we need is to stand together as an industry and tell the world what it is we actually DO for the world; for this is in fact one of the sexiest industries in the world! The pump industry, with all it’s diverse challenges, is really unsurpassed by any other industry. Why anyone would not want to work in this industry is beyond me!

Tell us how you got involved with the pump industry. Use the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you!