The Situation

The Electric Transmission & Substation Engineering organization was planning to recruit and hire over 60 new Substation and Civil Design Engineers. Before making that massive investment in people, leadership took a detailed look at the data around design errors, retention, and learning and realized a new approach was needed to prepare and equip new engineers to be successful.

The existing training for new engineers was informal and inconsistent, costly design errors had stopped large construction projects, and the ratio of new to experienced engineers was high and increasing.

Mosaic Offers a Solution

The Transmission & Substation Engineering organization partnered with Mosaic to build a comprehensive Engineers-in-Training (EIT) program that includes the following components: structured onboarding, instructor-led courses, on-the-job training (OJT), field experience, a mentorship program, a LinkedIn Learning Pathway, rotational assignments, and hands-on project work.

• The EIT program spans 18 months and has four phases that run concurrent to hiring. Students and mentors receive a full schedule and a checklist of tasks for the entire program.
• Students follow a structured learning path tracked in PG&E’s learning management system (LMS) to ensure consistent record keeping and training completion.
• Mentors oversee the on-the-job aspect of the program, including facilitating site visits and providing and reviewing project work for new engineers.
• The EIT program utilizes a cohort model that keeps engineers together throughout the program. This approach builds camaraderie and a cohesive team across regions for the substation and civil engineering groups.

In Conclusion

Both students and mentors have given the training program high praise and have noted how much they’ve been able to learn, even in an environment with strict COVID-19 restrictions. The Academy continues to conduct routine metrics surveys and hold focus groups for continued improvement, both with supervisors and managers and the cohorts themselves.