Good Grief Charley Brown ! Now We Have a Maintenance Crisis

My thanks to Joel Leonard over at PlantServices.com for taking the bull by the horns.

With American Idol returning to the television air waves, Joel was reminded of why he started his crusade for awareness for the Maintenance Crisis in the first place.

The fuss and attention being paid to crowning still another singing American Idol has gotten on his nerves again. In case you didn’t know, almost five years ago he was a guest speaker at the Society for Maintenance & Reliability Professionals (SMRP) Conference in Nashville. That conference changed his life and started him on a crusade against the maintenance crisis.

At the time, Joel was serving as VP of the Association for Facilities Engineering and the board had been discussing the pending retirement of the boomer generation. To his surprise, that was a key concern at SMRP. Bob Baldwin, then editor of Maintenance Technology, led an open discussion about the pending crisis. He polled the audience of more than 600 engineers and maintenance pros from the biggest companies in the United States and said, “Raise your hand if you plan to retire in the next 10 years.”

More than 90% of the audience  reached for the sky. Then he asked the attendees to keep their hands raised if they felt comfortable with the next generation. Everyone dropped their hands.

Baldwin then asked why. One said,  “The kids aren’t hungry and aren’t pursuing the education needed to advance in this competitive profession.” Others chimed in, saying, “The insecurity of manufacturing is scaring the younger generation away,” and, They don’t want to get their hands dirty.” Some said that most of them don’t even know about the maintenance, reliability and facilities engineering professions. Or maintenance simply just isn’t cool.

When the group adjourned for a break, Joel and others stretched their legs outside in the 30° weather. To their surprise, around the corner they saw about 5,000 of the very people we had been looking for —16-to-28-year-olds — standing in a line outside the Nashville Coliseum. They were waiting to audition for American Idol. While we were discussing the exodus of retiring maintenance talent, whose salaries averaged more than $80,000, and wondering where the next generation was, we realized there they here at the Coliseum, hoping to sing their way to the top.

That evening, they decided that talking at maintenance conferences or writing books and articles for other engineers wouldn't fix the problem because outsiders need to be aware of the problem and the opportunities the crisis presents. After a couple of barley-infused beverages, Joel posed, “Why not write a song about the maintenance crisis?” His friends agreed that it was a good idea, but they said he couldn’t do it.

They were partly right: he couldn’t do it alone. With the help of some friends, real musicians took Joel's original lyrics and now as a result there we is not only a song, but in nine genres, with one version especially for women, and jazz, Spanish and French renditions in the works.

The songs have been played at industrial and engineering conferences worldwide. Rolls Royce Aerospace and others have made it their department’s anthem. The songs have been downloaded from Joel's Web site more than 50,000 times. Radio stations, including National Public Radio, have played it. Even a class of sixth graders knows the country version, “Find me a Maintenance Woman,” and at least three of them memorized the lyrics.

Free downloads of “Find Me a Maintenance Woman” and “The Maintenance Crisis Song” can be found at www.mpactlearning.com.