[00:00:00] Speaker A: The needs of the industry are changing. Right? It may be the case that there are fewer people who are classified as water and wastewater treatment and system operators, and maybe technology is going to play a role in causing that decline, but it doesn't mean that there's going to be fewer people employed in the water industry.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: I am Reese Sidzale, and this is.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Future of water, which we talk about.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: All the ways which companies, utilities and people are addressing the challenges and opportunities in water. This is episode 82, and I think it's going to be a good one. Today I'm going to be joined by Bluefield Senior Research director Eric Bindler. He's just back from Xylem Reach in Orlando and is now willing to share some of his insights on some recent US Bureau of Labor Statistics data that show the water and wastewater sectors are in decline.
It's been reported by the BLS that employment of the sector for treatment plant and system operators, it's actually projected a decline, 6% from 2022 to 2032. So over the next ten years, that's a significant drop. This news, if it is that news, shines a spotlight on critical infrastructure. Sector faces mounting challenges, from aging infrastructure assets to emerging contaminants and just basic system operations.
I make light of whether it's really news because we've been talking about the silver tsunami for quite some time at Bluefield, but also it's a common theme across the water sector as a whole. So what we're trying to figure out, or what Eric is going to hopefully shed some light on, is what this may all mean. And he's willing to jump into the rain to discuss what really might be happening and his perspectives on the market as a whole. But before we do that, I had three things I wanted to bring up, which hopefully will be of note. Firstly, I want to thank Radica, Fox and the EPA Office of Water for inviting me to participate in a listening session on PFAS this past week with a host of water industry leaders, from the supply chain to water utilities, all of whom are facing the challenge of emerging contaminants, most notably PFAS. It was a great discussion to hear about all the challenges and, quite honestly, opportunities in addressing what is a seemingly pervasive problem. If you'd like to hear some of my takeaways, I can lay them all out here, but I'm going to actually send you to my LinkedIn page so you can look me up for Reese Tisdale, Bluefield research on LinkedIn. I just posted actually this morning a list of points from the discussion that I took away from that, but also just sidebar conversations, what I thought were interesting and some of the challenges facing the sector and what everybody's concerned about from sighting of, I guess, destruction or disposal facilities, but also just labor.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: So give it a look.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: Secondly, I want to thank Rockwell, who invited me to moderate Rockwell Automation Industry Forum panel just yesterday. The panel accelerating the journey to Smartwater. We discussed everything from the uses and applications of digital solutions, crosswater and wastewater sectors, but also the challenges including things like cybersecurity and threats to adoption of data driven technologies such as the cloud, AI chat, GPT and what it all means. It was also a pleasure, if anything, to be joined by a group of industry leaders. Really interesting discussion.
Little dark at times, I'm not going to lie.
But like I said, it's all interesting and something everybody is confronting at this point and sort of what the next steps are and what it means for water and wastewater utility operators and leadership, as well as those third party contract service providers. Lastly, the third point I'm soliciting your help. Over the last six months, feedback we have received about the future Water podcast has been nothing but outstanding.
Quite honestly, we've got real momentum. But not only have people discovered Bluefield because of it, we've been told that it's actually a useful outlet for insights into the water sector. That's our goal. We're doing this because we have insights. We're working on all this all the time. We're not going to the outside market at this point. We're talking basically to our team internally and talking about what they're learning, sharing their perspectives. We're doing this for you. We're doing it for clients. It's not a lot to ask. So my ask is, if you're using a podcast platform like Apple Podcasts, please give us a review. It's as little as clicking on the stars at the bottom of the podcast page. Future of water. You can also write up a bit of view. You can just say something as simple as the future of water is great. That would go a long way in getting the word out even more. And if you're hearing this, I just want to thank you in advance for doing so. So those are my three points that I wanted to bring up with you today. And let's get to Eric, because I think that's really where the most interesting part of the conversation is going to be, rather than hearing me.
So here we go.
All right, so I'm joined here by Eric Bindler on Veterans Day. So thanks to all those veterans out. Eric, you know, you and I have been on the road this week doing different things. You've been at Xylem Reach in Orlando. I was in DC at the EPA and then moderated a panel at the Rockwell Automation Fair. So, busy week for us. And so therefore, this is what happens. You have to work on Bluefield Holiday.
So how were things with you?
[00:05:52] Speaker A: Things are good. Yeah, it was a nice trip to Orlando. Got to catch up with some old friends and the conference was great. Took my six month old baby to Disney for a day. So we had a good time. We had a good time, but glad to be home and kind of back in the nice fall weather.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Nice for all the listeners out there. Eric used to have, actually, his wife used to work for Disney, so they got free passes whenever they wanted. So I'm sure that was, hopefully you didn't have to pay for this.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: No, we still can find our way into free passes when we need to.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: Okay. Well, it may come in handy with a small child coming know as she grows, so. Well, let's get to the meat of the conversation. And that is Bureau of Labor Statistics just put out basically some data, and there's been a lot of discussion about this through industry circles. So rather than hearing me blather on about, let's, why don't you give us the story? What's going on with the data? What is it and what are people talking about?
[00:07:01] Speaker A: Yeah, so like you said, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics put out what's called an occupational Outlook Handbook, which I guess they do this for different types of jobs. This one is specifically about water and wastewater treatment plant and system operators is kind of the full title, and a lot of it is just kind of basic background info on what does that mean? What does a water and wastewater operator do? What is the work environment? What are kind of the education credentials and training and licensing and all of that. So kind of just standard qualitative stuff. Like if you wanted to be a water operator, this is what you need to know. But they have this really interesting section kind of at the back on the job outlook for water and wastewater operators, and they have this kind of figure in there that jumped out to us and many others in the industry that said, basically they're projecting that the number of water and wastewater treatment plan and system operators employed in the US is going to fall by about 6% between 2022 and 2032. And then as far as their kind of justification for that, they explicitly cite basically automation, right. Kind of digital transformation. Well, they don't use the term digital, but they talk about automation. They talk about improved equipment monitoring systems and things like that. So they say there will still be the need for skilled workers as kind of treatment and network systems become more complex, as the control systems become more complex. So there's always going to be a need for that skilled labor. But the total number of people is going to be, maybe the total demand for workers is going to shrink. And so that's something that, again, has really kind of, as you mentioned, taken the industry by storm. A lot of people are up in arms on social media about it and things like that.
And really kind of an interesting data point that we wanted to spend some time unpacking.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: Well, we've been talking about the silver tsunami, but should we be, or the industry the royal, we be in sort of a panic mode right now.
Why does it matter so much?
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think what's really interesting is a lot of the conversations we're seeing are from kind of tech vendors, from engineering firms that, again, are kind of up in arms about this data point and questioning it and trying to understand it. And I think first and foremost the reason for it is there's this significant fear in the industry of digital transformation, of AI, of automation basically replacing workers.
When you think about kind of the barriers to digital transformation within specifically kind of the utility sector, maybe the municipal utility sector, that concern about losing workers, about replacing workers is very prominent. It comes up a lot, I think, especially for operators. Right. And you get these situations where operators don't want to learn the new technology, they don't want to work with the new technology. They kind of push against new technology because they don't want to be pushed out or replaced. And therefore, management also is kind of hesitant to kind of poke that bear to a certain extent and get involved in investing in these new technologies, investing in AI or in automation or in other types of remote monitoring systems because they don't want to start that conversation and kind of scare their staff. So many those of us in the industry that kind of promote digital technology and promote digital transformation, we've been kind of trying to confront those fears by really making the case that digital technology, it's not going to replace existing operators, it's going to empower them. Right. It's going to help them make better decisions. It's going to free them up to do more high value work. IT's going to make their lives better. I mean, we've done a lot, even Bluefield ourselves and a lot of the work the kind of white papers and thought leadership stuff that we've done with some of our clients, we've been very much involved in kind of pushing that message as well. And so we've done stuff with like Arcadis or Xylem, where we've talked about the benefits of using digital systems, using AI to kind of enhance the existing operator capabilities and again, kind of maybe automate some of the more mundane or the more manual processes and give operators new roles, new responsibilities, new room for kind of creativity and decision making. There's that side of it. There's also just the fact that as we'll get into in a little bit, staffing is a major problem in the industry. And so it's in many cases not so much about replacing existing workers as it is about kind of making up for workers that are no longer around, for people that have retired or for these positions that are hard to know. Technology can help fill those gaps. And so that's a lot of what the industry, what the supplier side of the industry, what engineering firms who are pushing digital transformation. We've all been kind of making this case. So for the federal government, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, to come out with these projections that say basically the opposite, that digital technology is actually going to directly result in a 6% decline in operators over the next decade, that's something that's kind of scary and a pretty big deal that the industry is really kind of grappling with.
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
The conversations I've had, whether it be in Washington or also here in Boston over the past week, kind of really get at this partly one just to add know, you're talking mostly about digital and what that means. But the other side of it is at the EPA meeting at the Office of Water this past week, we were talking a bit about, well, we're talking about PFAS and innovation and new technologies to treat, dispose, destroy emerging contaminants. And one of the points brought up, and I can't remember who was from which company, but it was with the adoption or rollout of these new treatment technologies, more advanced than, let's just say, the traditional activated, granular activated carbon as a treatment solution, it's going to require new certifications, it's going to require training, it's going to require new personnel. So that's a whole nother aspect. So the industry is getting squeezed in a lot of different ways. One, there's sort of the silver tsunami, so people are retiring. How do you capture that knowledge, that information? Then there's also the other aspect of it. And that is the externalities. Right. So whether it's water quality issues or then there's the digital piece and then there's just the broader labor market, which we maybe can dig into that. But I thought that was interesting. Also at the automation forum we were talking about, labor is a major challenge, right? So it becomes competitive. So water utilities, but also the engineering firms. You've talked about this on this podcast, but also in some of our research that everybody's fighting for these qualified people who have the data management capabilities, but also just the markets, the labor markets kind of gone a little crazy over the past couple of years. But that being said, you've been digging into the report and the data. So what does the data say?
[00:14:27] Speaker A: Yeah, so I kind of just reached out to the BLS as soon as we saw this and could, could you kind of give me some background here on where do these numbers come from? What's your methodology for these projections? I got a very long email in response with actually a lot of really helpful links. I mean, I think a lot of data that we're going to continue to dig into and see if there's other ways that we can use it. But I think probably there are two major kind of pieces to unpack here. The first one is just looking at the historical data, right. So I went back and grabbed essentially the BLS's kind of record for that same job occupation, right, for water and wastewater treatment and system operators from the past twelve years. So about, from 2011 up to 2022. And if you look at the top line numbers, let me pull up the number. So I've got it handy. There's about, right now, about 120 or so thousand people that fit that job description in the labor market right now nationwide. That's where we are in 2022.
The number has been growing about 1% annually over the past twelve years. It does kind of go up and down a little bit from year to year. There seemed to be a bit of a peak, maybe in 2018, 2019, but it is an occupation that has been growing. So first and foremost, it's not that there's this historical pattern of decline that the BLS is just projecting forward when they say there's going to be this 6% drop. So that, I think is an important starting point. But what's really interesting is that when you break down the composition of the sector, you can also look at, if you take that 120,000, you can look at what industries those water and wastewater operators are employed in. And so as you might expect, the majority are kind of in the government or the public sector, but that number has actually been shrinking. So from in 2011, about 80% of all water and wastewater operators were employed in what's considered a public sector. Federal, state, local government, for example. Municipal utilities would be obviously the example there. But that 80% has now fallen to about 75%. So only 75% now are public sector employees. The other 25% are employed in a variety of private sector industries. Right. And so we've seen the number of private sector privately employed water and wastewater operators has grown by about 32% over the past twelve years. Pretty big jump, especially in various kind of industrial verticals. Right? So the manufacturing sector has seen about a 60% jump in the number of water and wastewater operators over the past twelve years. But also the private utility market, which includes, of course, private water utilities, but also kind of the power sector. Right. Water and wastewater treatment facilities associated with power generation and oil and gas and things like that. And this really resonates with what we've been seeing. We obviously do a lot of work in the industrial, water and wastewater management sector. We've been putting out reports this year, kind of digging in vertical by vertical into verticals like power, energy, oil and gas, food and BEV semiconductor manufacturing. And, yeah, this trend is towards kind of establishing and installing on site treatment infrastructure, essentially to help these industrial facilities or these industrial players manage their water challenges, get the water quality that they need, potentially invest in reuse to address water scarcity, kind of avoid regulatory issues related to their wastewater discharge and things like that. So it makes sense, right? I mean, that as we're seeing, the sector is growing, but a lot of that growth is actually coming from private sector water and wastewater operators. So that's the first big takeaway here when we look at the historical data, when we flip to the BLS's projections for what's going to happen over the next ten years, right, this kind of 6% decline in the total number of operators, they also provide you the opportunity to dig in on what's happening there and you can make some of the same cuts as to not just the total 120,000 operators, but also by subsector and things like that. And there, actually, the BLS seems to be basically projecting that this current trend is going to reverse, right. That we're going to see actually the greatest cuts not in public sector employees, public sector operators, but in private sector operators, right? So again, it's about a 6% decline overall, but there's declines of 15, 2030, even 40% projected for water and wastewater operators in iron and steel mills, or in the power generation sector, or in pulp and paper manufacturing, which I think when you put it in that perspective, it does kind of make sense, right. That in some cases, these may be industries that are already in decline to a certain extent. Right? I mean, in our own research on pulp and know, we see that the US has kind of lost a lot of that manufacturing capacity to China, to other parts of Asia, for example. So maybe tracking some of those broader industrial declines, but also, if you're thinking about the investment in automation and specifically using automation and digital technology to replace people, to cut costs, to cut your labor, you would expect more of that in the private sector than you wouldn't in the public sector. And that's kind of what this data is showing.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So I think I agree with you. Your point about sort of the industries in decline are shifting. Like you mentioned, pulp and paper power generation is one where energy transitions underway. We're shifting away from water intensive power generation solutions like coal, natural gas, but natural gas is becoming more efficient in its water management and usage. There's obviously wind and solar and other things. So I think that's really interesting. Longer term, we've talked about at Bluefield is like, what's the role of hydrogen? There may be a dip, but the water management may sort of rebound a little bit when it comes to the power sector. This is really interesting stuff, and I appreciate the fact that one not only, which is what we do, and you do a great job at, is like reaching out to the BLS to get the data.
So let's just talk about the broader context of the water sector as a whole when it comes to the current state of staffing and hiring.
There's been a lot happening, obviously, over what are we, 2023 now? Since really more acutely since the start of COVID in 2020, but there's a lot happening. So what's the story?
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I think at the end of the day, probably we'll continue to kind of litigate this conversation around what's going to happen to operators. And is this number, the 6% number, realistic?
As I said, the private sector piece of it is a lot worse, but they are still projecting, like a 7% decline for government sector operators, a 5% decline for private utility operators, and things like that. So it's not to say my previous point, it's not to say that all of the declines are coming in the industrial sector. When we flip and look at what's going on in the municipal sector, this is obviously something that has been really top of mind for us. We've done previous podcast episodes on this, we've done webcasts on this. It comes up a lot in our research and conversations with clients and conference presentations. And so there's a couple of key things here. I mean, there is the longer term, like you said, the silver tsunami piece of it, this longer term trend around high retirement rates. Right.
Specifically, the kind of municipal water utility workforce is older on average, than the kind of national workforce in other industries. There's this Brookings Institution report from maybe five years ago that said something like 10% of all water utility workers were going to either retire or transfer out of the sector every year through 2026. And I think that's a number that in some cases, may even be an underestimate, especially what we've seen with, given what we've seen with COVID with this kind of Great resignation, where many workers that maybe were not quite ready to retire ended up leaving anyway just to avoid that risk of exposure. In the early days of the pandemic and then the Great Resignation, we're seeing a lot of people kind of moving jobs, changing industries, shifting around in the sector. I think in the heyday of that, maybe the past year or two, I've talked to utilities that face kind of annual staff turnover rates as high as, like 50%. Right? I mean, that's just unthinkable that 50% of your organization would leave in the course of a year. But that's where we are in some places in some parts of the world. And specifically to kind of bring it back to North America and to some maybe more quantitative data. There was the state of the water industry report from the AWWA in 2021 that said something like 40% of all North American utilities were having trouble hiring. A quarter were struggling just to meet their minimum staffing requirements, just their basic kind of minimum staffing requirements. And a lot of that was coming from, it was the kind of skilled water industry specific positions like treatment operators and service technicians and heavy equipment operators that were really hard to fill. And so you've got this dynamic where utilities are really just struggling to kind of keep the lights on and get the people that they need to do the jobs that they need to do.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's just a weird time.
There's been a bit of a whipsaw effect with COVID People working remotely, people getting tired of working, working from home, being lonely in some.
Just like I said, it's a weird world. It feels a little bit like we're sort of returning back to the norm, I was looking at some Bloomberg data recently about work from home, just more broadly speaking, and it does vary regionally, but the water utility space, it is critical infrastructure. I mean, there are certain things where people need to be there. They need to be monitoring these systems.
Many times on site, there are field workers that need to be out there. But what are the broader reasons for, I guess, this change, these issues? Anything that's sort of underlying this, what I would say, silver tsunami.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: So to, I mean, so I think the biggest one is just wages, right? I mean, we have looked at some other BLS data. There's a ton of really interesting BLS data. Every time I look into it, I find more little kind of nuggets of information. But when we were getting ready for a webcast for our clients last year on kind of utility workforce issues, I was digging through some different kind of median wage information for basically comparing the water sector to electric and gas utilities. And so you can actually go and look at individual positions. You can see a manager in a water utility versus an electric or gas utility, an engineer, a plant operator, a meter reader, and kind of categorically across the board, when you compare water to those other utility sectors, electric and gas utility workers make about 40% more for the same types of positions than their water utility counterparts. Right? So even just within this kind of close, adjacent industry, water sector workers are getting a lot less money for doing similar types of work, let alone comparing and competing with all of the other industries out there, all of the other sectors that are growing and that are kind of competing for workers. As you mentioned, there's also, I think, just the general lack of awareness about the water sector. Right. I mean, again, when water and wastewater infrastructure is operating well, when water and wastewater utilities are doing their jobs, people aren't thinking about it. They're kind of turning on their taps, getting water, flushing the toilet, and it's not a problem for them anymore. Right. So it's not necessarily something that a lot of people kind of grow up dreaming that they want to be part of, even if they are interested in the environment, interested in sustainability. There's that kind of lack of connection between getting involved in this line of work. And then I think to your point about, especially recently with COVID and this kind of broader shift in the expectations around work and kind of what a career looks like, that flexibility to maybe work in a different city or go spend half the year in another part of the world being a digital nomad, that doesn't really work for utility staff, you're kind of tied to these local systems, your local customer base, the assets that you're operating. And so that flexibility just isn't there. And, I mean, I've had plenty of conversations with utilities who see they're losing staff to other organizations that offer that flexibility. Right. Maybe engineering firms or tech firms or other types of kind of industry players that they can offer that remote work flexibility that a utility just simply can't. There's also other types of requirements. I had a really interesting conversation at Xylem Reach, actually, this week about the challenges of bringing in younger workers and the fact that in many cases, it's really hard for them to pass drug tests. And if they don't, if you've got somebody out driving a city vehicle or out in the public with a city logo on their shirt, if there's any kind of an issue, they immediately get drug tested. If there's any issue with that, they're out. Right. There's just no kind of second chances. The liability there is really high compared to maybe a private sector employer. That doesn't matter. Right. Younger people maybe can get away with that. And it's not just younger people. Right.
But that was a really interesting perspective that I hadn't heard before.
Background checks as well, educational requirements. There's all of these things that utilities, especially as kind of municipal or government entities, they don't maybe have the same flexibility as other types of private sector organizations in making the position and the requirements more appealing to bring more people in the door.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: Yeah. And quite honestly, it's Veterans Day, so I'll give a shout out to the government workers. Right. This is what government is for in many cases. Like you said, we've talked a lot about it. Most of the water wastewater utilities are government run, government owned, maybe not federal government in some cases, yes. But for the most part, it's state, local authorities and municipalities that are running these things, and it is a place where we do need to invest. So every time one says government stinks, it's inefficient. It's a problem. I don't want to pay taxes. I don't want to pay for this.
A lot of the funding doesn't just come out of water rates. Right. Because there are caps on that. We've just done a water rate study again, and that only pays for part of it. That pays mainly for operations. But there are huge capital investments that need to be made. We've talked about the 75,000 or so water wastewater systems, but there's also the 4 million mile of distribution and collection systems that need to be maintained and managed as well. So, yeah, it's a little frustrating. Right. And I think just the world has changed a little bit. Right. The world has become more global in nature. I use that term loosely in the sense that people aren't always going to one job and staying there for 50 years of their career. Today's world is not our parents world. So that's one of the challenges. And I just say leave it as a frustration. So are there any silver linings? Let's see if we can turn this into a positive. What are your thoughts on that, Eric?
[00:30:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think the other way to think about this, too is that specifically to kind of bring it back to that perspective of the 6% decline in operators, that may very well turn out to be true. I know that as we've kind of talked about, there are many in the industry that maybe don't want that data point out there, but part of it is that the needs of the industry are changing. Right. It may be the case that there are fewer people who are classified as water and wastewater treatment and system operators, and maybe technology is going to play a role in causing that decline. Right. If you've got certain types of tech investments and monitoring and automation and AI, maybe you don't need as many people that are doing that specific job. But it doesn't mean that there's going to be fewer people employed in the water industry. Right? Actually, something that always kind of surprises me every time I look at it is despite everything, all the data points that we've just talked about and all of the kind of conversations we've had in the industry about the staffing and hiring and recruiting challenges in the industry, we look on a quarterly basis at just overall BLS data on water industry employment, and it just goes up. Right? Over the past, we've tracked it, I think, back to like 2010 in our municipal water quarterlies, and it's grown pretty steadily at about 1.5% every year.
We haven't seen any major downturns. We haven't seen any major volatility there. Despite all of this.
According to the BLS, the number of people employed in the industry in one form or another is actually growing. Right. But they may not all be operators and maybe they don't have to be. There is this changing demand, these changing needs for different types of positions and skill sets and backgrounds that is part of this broader digital transformation and the kind of broader shift in what it means to be a water utility and what the services are that are provided and the information and the data and the systems that are being run and the way assets are operated. Right. There's all of these changes and these shifts that we talk about in all of our research and on this podcast. They require different types of skill sets, right?
There are jobs now that maybe utilities are hiring for and bringing people on for that maybe didn't exist, at least not in the water industry ten years ago, 1520 years ago, like data scientists, cybersecurity professionals, things like that. I was looking back at that old Brookings Institution report that I mentioned earlier, and they had a little kind of an info box at one point on what they thought were going to be the quickest growing occupations within the water industry through the middle of this decade. And it's like software developers, it's information security analysts, it's actually market researchers was number three, which is funny from my perspective as a market researcher, that that's where they see the growth in the industry. So yeah, we may have fewer operators. It doesn't mean we're going to have fewer people in the industry. It means that utilities have a more diverse set of needs and skill sets that they're going to be hiring for. And I think that's a good thing, right? I mean, that means that the industry is changing and growing and evolving, and hopefully it leads to better outcomes for everybody.
[00:33:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Here's to market research. But I knew there was a silver lining. So I think back to my conversations at the Rockwell Automation Fair. That was one of the takeaways there was on my panel was someone from Jacobs Violia, and that was a resound. I mean, they felt strongly that it's not because we were talking about AI and cybersecurity and such, and jobs aren't just going to disappear. So one, someone's got to manage the AI. There's still things that need to be done, really. I think the silver lining was it just may be one, it makes customer service representatives more efficient in how they do things. When it comes to billing, when it comes to response times, they do either do more of what they're doing or they can do something else.
That's the challenge. And I think that's where the media comes into play, where it's oh my God, chat GPT and AI is going to take over the world. We're not going to have to do anything as a society for that matter. It's just going to run itself. That's not going to happen.
There's just too much going on behind the scenes or not. So I think I agree with you completely about sort of the shifts and where things are going and the water sector is mature.
There's a lot of knowledge that's still actually in people's heads. Right. I mean, that's one of the things about digital technologies, is making sort of the system more efficient as it is. Another thing I wanted to add, which is really, we haven't talked about this, but when you look at the water industry, maybe, I don't know where this would fall in the data, but then there's the role of contract operators. So whether it be Infamark or Jacobs or Violia or H 20 innovation or three, four companies that come to mind, particularly in the US, they're doing a lot of on M, whether on water wastewater utilities as third party players, they have these one, two 3510 year contracts that they're working. And so they're sort of on the outside. So I'm not sure where they fall in the data. They may not even sort of hit that. They fall in the broader water industry BLS data, but not on the utility operations. And that's a segment that seems to be growing. The other part of that, beyond just O M, is sort of on call contract operations, right, where utilities have immediate or acute pressures, where they have contracts with companies such as that that come in and do the work. So that's an interesting segment we've been talking about internally as well. So that would be where maybe we leave it. Unless you have something else. My next question otherwise would be, what are you working on next? You got a lot going on. We're busy. It's the end of the year. People are asking what's up? So what's your take?
[00:37:07] Speaker A: Yeah, it must be, I guess this time of year it's kind of strategic planning season. And so we've got a lot of clients that are kind of reaching out to set up briefings with us, presentations, and so kind of jumping from topic to topic every couple of days. I was obviously at the Xylem conference earlier this week and gave a presentation about our global metering report that we put out earlier in the year. Got a lot of great kind of questions from some Xylem folks and from some of their partners and customers on that.
Next up, doing a kind of an overall state of the global water sector and infrastructure and digital trends on Tuesday of next week, and then on Thursday digging in on the North American Pipe and network infrastructure market. All of that is to say, if you're an existing Bluefield client, if you're looking at a new topic, kind of curious about what's going on, or thinking about trends for next year, then reach out.
This is a really big kind of important part of the service that we offer in not just putting out data and reports and podcasts and webcasts, but actually trying to sit and have conversations with our clients about what's changing.
What are markets that we're looking at? What are markets that they're looking at? How can we kind of make our data and our knowledge and our information more actionable? So, yeah, if you have a Bluefield subscription and you want to bring us in virtually or even in person in some cases to catch up and talk shop, then Let us know.
[00:38:32] Speaker B: Yeah, so I agree with you 100%. It's been busy. And actually some of our clients have been really proactive in requesting some of this information.
I think a week or two ago, you've been involved in some of this. We've talked about PFAS, we've talked about lead service lines, just talked about hydrogen and the emergence of hydrogen, renewable natural gas, what that means for their businesses. One of the challenges of the water sector is that it does touch everything.
Everything in the room in which I stand has been touched or directly or indirectly by water in some form. So if someone said to me yesterday, wow. Or two days ago, he's like, wow. What you could do is really niche, kind of, because water touches everything in one way or another. So really interesting stuff. I really appreciate you getting on this. I don't remember when I asked you when we saw the data come out and it was sort of hitting the interweb.
It's like, oh, this would be a really interesting podcast. And I think definitely you hit the ball out of the park on this, not only in just sharing your perspectives, but also just digging into it. I mean, this is what we like to do. There's a good source of data at the BLS.
We are well versed in sort of sorting through all this government data. It's one of the ways we help clients and companies.
We know how to do it, do it efficiently using digital technology or AI or not.
It's something, you've done a good job on this, so I really appreciate you jumping on and on a holiday at that. So I'm just glad that I live across from the USS Constitution, old Ironsides, and I was kind of anticipating canon shots to be coming my way. And I'm not going to lie, they do it every day. They do it at 08:00 a.m.. And they do it at sunset, and it is so loud. The cannon, they're blanks, obviously, but it points right at my house, right across the mouth of the Charles river and the mystic. And it is loud. And so at least we weren't disrupted by.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: So next time, we'll time that right for the end. Get a nice cannon blast to cap off the.
[00:40:54] Speaker B: Exactly.
Exactly. It's loud. All right, well, with that, have a great weekend, and we will talk again soon. So appreciate the time and effort.
[00:41:06] Speaker A: Thanks, Reese. Talk to you later.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: All right, take care.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: All right.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: That was fantastic. I really appreciate Eric getting on, even on the side of this conversation. In know. He's so knowledgeable, knows what's happening. We talk about so many different things, so many thanks to him. And if you are a client, you should be tapping into Eric and the rest of our team for their insights and perspectives. Part of the relationship as a client is you get to call and talk to us at any time. That's the way it works.
We like it that way. We look forward to the questions.
Clients ask the best questions, and that's what helps guide our research. So this BLS data, actually a question came to us from a client to kind of poke us, and we said, hey, let's do this podcast. So thank you again, and thanks to Eric on Veterans Day for taking the time to do so. And before we sign off, as always, if you are in Boston, where the big part of our global team will be next week, or in Barcelona, let us know. We'd enjoy the opportunity for a meeting. Eric and I talked just before this that meetings are important. We have a number of clients that we've seen, as you know, because I've talked about it on the podcast. Face to face meetings go a long way, from Los Angeles to Madrid to Paris to Amsterdam to New York to Orlando to Washington, DC, and on and on. That's where we've been over the past month. Let us help you, but let's do it in person. I like being with people, so let us know. Please subscribe. As I said from the outset, give us a review. Apple Podcast allows you to do it Spotify less so, but if you get that chance, give us a shout out. It's really, really helpful to us to spread the word about the future of Water podcast.
If you have any topic, ideas, or thoughts that you'd like us to bring up, reach out to us at
[email protected] we're doing this for yoU. Lastly, tell a friend about it. Certainly have a colleague that's a friend that might be interested in this. You don't have to listen to every episode, but there's got to be something out there. This is number 82. Give it a shot. Be a friend.
We're getting to the holiday season anyways, so this podcast and these water industry insights been brought to you by the one and only Bluefield research. To learn more about us and how we help people across the water industry, visit us at blue fieldresearch.com. Until we talk again, be well, be safe, and take care.
