Consultant Well May Be Drying Up ...

… at least, that’s the word from the Airport Consultants Council, held in Ft. Lauderdale this week. An opening session at the ACC’s annual conference highlighted the fact that many airport consulting firms are doggedly looking for new hires – engineers; architects; planners; designers, etc. One company says it can hire more than 200 today … if they were available.  And therein lies the problem. They aren’t.  While ACC officials don’t see a need to sound a warning siren to industry just yet, it could come in the not too distant future. The talent pool has dried up. Paula Hochstetler, president of ACC, speculates that a significant part of the problem may lie in the fact that the IT age is to blame. The information technology industry draws from the same pool as does the ACC crowd. Techies and engineers are the same breed, it seems. She suggests that, ironically, it may those same techies who help fill the void in the long run, providing new technology solutions to what is done manually today. We’ll see.  Bottom line: The potential exists that in a few years airports could find their infrastructure projects being stalled by a shortage of expertise. T.J. Schulz, ACC vice president, ponders whether the forthcoming battle for funding reauthorization should include Congressional action on this critical subject. At the very least, he says, just having language in the bill could go a long way in giving the issue visibility. Taking that a step further, maybe Congress could give some tax breaks to those who seek engineering or related degrees.  Thanks for reading.  jfi