Commercial diver Nick Schulz of Buzzards Bay, electrician apprentice Katie Leonard of Brewster and millwright Ed Cannon of Bourne Village are looking to wind projects off the coast of Southeastern Massachusetts as a chance of a lifetime. But for different reasons.
For Schulz, the deep-water career he chose requires him to follow the contracts.
“Wherever the work goes, I have to go,” Schulz, 38, said.
But with projects like the $2 billion Vineyard Wind construction project planned 14 miles south of Martha's Vineyard, he could be sleeping in his own bed more often.
"I have a chance to be home,” Schulz said.
In union halls throughout Southeastern Massachusetts, business managers and trainers are preparing for the calls expected late next year from Vineyard Wind when the 84-turbine project could be fully underway. Other offshore wind farm construction projects will be coming as well, along with 25-year operations and maintenance contracts.
The interest is high among union members.
“I’m looking at the list right now,” said David Borrus, business agent for the Commercial Diving and Pile Drivers Local 56 in Boston, of which Schulz is a member. “I’ve got 40 to 50 names who want a piece of this.”
So, too, with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 223 in Taunton where Leonard, 19, a 2017 Cape Cod Regional Technical High School graduate, is in her third year of a four-year apprenticeship program.
“I think that is so cool to be able to go out on a boat and climb the towers and actually assemble a wind turbine,” said Leonard, whose father, Paul, is an electrician. “That’s not something you get to do every day.”
With legislation signed by Gov. Charlie Baker in 2016, electric utilities are required by 2027 toseek bids on1,600 megawatts of offshore wind energy. The winning bidders will build multiple offshore wind projects off the coast, like the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project, expected to be the first industrial-sized offshore wind farm in the country. In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the projects will create thousands of jobs, according to a 2018 workforce assessment by the Massachusetts Center for Clean Energy.
“It would mean, for me, years of steady work not far from home,” said Cannon, 56, whose father took him on engineering jobs across the country before he earned his GED and weldingcertification, and later became a millwright. His Local 1121 is affiliated with Local 56, all of which are part of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America.
“I want it done right and I want to be involved in it and I take great pride in what I do," Cannon said. "I know my brothers and sisters do as well. I know that we all want it done right. We all want to do it, and do it right.”
Millwrights, who earn around $40 an hour in the region, install and maintain large mechanized equipment in industrial settings such as a factory, power plant or wind farm. One of the specialties of millwrights is heavy lifting. “We routinely lift and install things that weigh 200 tons and put them safely into place,” Cannon said, such as steam or gas turbines in a power plant. “We pick them up, put them in place, align them and get them running.”
Turbines are a strong specialty for millwrights, although Cannon said that so far in 20 years he has not yet worked on a wind turbine, either onshore or off. “I’ve welded on offshore drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico,” he said, where heavy seas can be “interesting” and safety is job one.
As the Massachusetts offshore wind industry develops, trade workers are considered a high priority due to their scarcity nationwide, the significant number required for offshore wind contracts and the additional training needed to work in hazardous or unusual circ*mstances, according to the assessment.
Local 56 received a $100,000 grant in May to sponsor basic safety training forits members to be conducted at Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Buzzards Bay, part of a larger grant package announced by the Baker administration.
At the IBEW office in Taunton, trainers will incorporate into the standard licensed electrician’s curriculum whatever is required by turbine manufacturers or offshore wind developers, and also add safety training.
“You do a lot of work in tight, confined spaces but it’s really technical, real specific, high-quality work that has to be done right the first time,” said IBEW Local 223 Business Agent Bart Perry, who has worked on about 75 percent of the onshore wind turbines in Southeastern Massachusetts. Perry emphasized the need for physical fitness as well.
When she was a child, Leonard's father took her with him on his jobs on the Cape, mostly residential construction. She visited electric supply stores with him and endured jokes about how she’d end up an electrician as well. But she never believed it until she arrived at Cape Tech and tried carpentry first and then moved to the electrician shop. “I made the lights work on my own, without my dad,” she said.
Leonard attends apprentice training two nights a week from September to May, where students use computer simulators and classroom training as they work toward passing the state test required to obtain an electrician’s license. Once on the job, they'll earn about $41 an hour.
“To make the Cape green, also that’s a big deal,”Leonard said of the offshore wind industry.
Schulz, who grew up in Westminster and tried college for two years, also supports renewable energy. He’s a certified welder and trained pile driver, but became a commercial diver nine years ago specifically with the future offshore wind industry in mind.
“It seemed like, for myself, that was going to be a pretty good place of employment and opportunity,” Schulz said. He sees himself as playing a role in laying the submarine cables from the wind farm to land and installing the underwater foundations of the turbines. Once a wind farm is operating, a commercial diver would be needed to regularly inspect and maintain submerged pieces. “Like anything, your house has to be painted,” Schulz said.
A commercial diver would typically be paid in the range of $46 an hour, he said.
“I personally have gone and spoke to them and a few other people have,” Schulz said of Vineyard Wind. “It seems like they’ve got their stuff together.”
Cannon began to set his sights on offshore wind after talking to pile drivers on another job who had worked on the five-turbine wind farm off Block Island in Rhode Island. He and other millwrightstogether attended an information session on job opportunities this year in New Bedford. But way before that, Cannonhad gone through eighth grade in the Bourne public school system and hung out with his dad, where he was already learning the ropes.
“I grew up on big heavy industrial job sites, and so this is what I do,” Cannon said. “This is what I’ve always done. My dad was a crane operator who had a shorefront protection business on the Cape. He built jetties and riprap stone walls. He did that for years down here, and then after my parents divorced he became a field engineer and started building big equipment all over the place.”
Since then he’s worked all over the country. But a significant local project does have its draw.
“We do take pride in what we do, and I want us to be able to have local workers take part in it,” Cannon said.
— Follow Mary Ann Bragg on Twitter: @maryannbraggCCT.
