Offshore Wind Energy Occupational Maps
The following occupational maps, driven by identified job titles matched to standard occupational codes (SOC), provide information such as job descriptions, education levels, experience requirements, certifications, and skills related to the offshore wind industry.
Objectives:
- Create list of offshore wind job titles and align with the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) System.
- Provide job descriptions and education, skill, and certification requirements for each occupation.
- Use real-world data and actual job postings.
Goals:
- Create standardized list of job titles across phases of development to promote common language usage around jobs in the offshore wind industry.
- Develop a publicly available dataset that organizations can leverage to support resources, tool development, and workforce analysis projects.
Feedback
NREL and DOE want your feedback!
Any level of feedback or expertise you can provide is welcome!
NREL is providing an open comment period between October and November 2024 to gather feedback. Across the occupational maps, NREL is requesting developers, operators, original equipment manufacturers, and education and training programs:
- Review list of job titles and alternate titles and indicate any that we are missing or are incorrect.
- Suggest what jobs you think could be consolidated and/or if you think any jobs have a better suggested title.
- Review job categories (tabs) and assess whether any category could be added or consolidated.
- Provide information for cells with no data.
- Use the dropdowns below to select the offshore wind phase.
- Click 'Download Spreadsheet' or select a component to download the occupational map.
- Review map based on your recruiting, training, or hiring knowledge.
- Refer to phase-specific questions for further targeted feedback under the Occupational Map dropdowns.
- Make changes in the spreadsheet. Feel free to highlight cells or make comments.
- Upload the spreadsheet with you revision using the Form.
- with any questions.
Occupational Maps
The occupational maps are grouped into different offshore wind project phases. The figure shows the different fields within each map. Please click on each drop down to download a spreadsheet containing the dataset and to learn how to provide NREL feedback on the occupations.
Figure: Types of field information compiled at the job level for the offshore wind occupational maps.
Pre-Development/Development
Jobs associated with site assessment, plant design, permitting, financing, project management, and other preconstruction activities.
View occupations by clicking Download Spreadsheet.
Provide feedback using this form
- NREL request recruiters, hiring managers, workforce professionals, and other industry members provide feedback on the occupational map.
- Specific questions for Pre-Development/Development:
- Do the job categories seem correct? Could any be condensed, for example Corporate Project Management and Financing?
- For the job category Site Assessment, are we missing any vital roles, particularly ones to do with virtual mapping?
- Please review the questions and make changes within the spreadsheet. Upload your revised spreadsheet using the feedback form.
Jobs for various components produced at facilities, from engineering and design of components to production Jobs involved in ports and staging, such as terminal crews and logistics and management roles located portside.
View occupations by clicking Download Spreadsheet.
Provide feedback using this form
- NREL request recruiters, hiring managers, workforce professionals, and other industry members provide feedback on the occupational map.
- Specific questions for Component Manufacturing maps:
Blades:
- In corporate design, NREL has identified blade core engineer, blade testing engineer, marine structure engineer, bearing engineer, and vibration and noise control engineer as being component specific occupation titles. Do these look correct in terms of job description, certifications and skills? Are they normally referred to by different titles? Should any be condensed?
- Currently, welders are not included in blade manufacturing, however, we do have CNC operators which often control welding machines. Should there be a separate welding role? If yes, what would the certifications and job descriptions be?
- Are structural metal engineers needed for designing of a blade and/or would they be in the factory level mgmt.+ engineering instead of in corporate design?
- Which roles under factory level worker could be condensed into CNC operator?
Towers:
- NREL identified a Tower Design Engineer in Corporate Design. Do the job description, certifications, education, and programs look right? Are there other tower-specific roles necessary in the engineering space that we did not cover?
- Are there additional roles related to coating necessary for the manufacturing phase?
- Which roles under factory level worker could be condensed into CNC operator?
Nacelle Assembly:
- What job category do composite materials engineer , and thermoplastics engineer fall under? Factory-level Management and Engineer, Corporate Design, or both? They are currently under Factory-level Management and Engineering.
- Is a laser operator or a structural metal fabricator needed for the final assembly of the nacelle? Or would that have happened earlier on in the manufacturing process?
- Which roles under factory level worker could be condensed into CNC operator?
Monopiles:
- Which roles under factory level worker could be condensed into CNC operator?
Transition Pieces:
- Is there a need for a rigger, pipefitter, and pipefitter support when manufacturing transition pieces?
- Which roles under factory level worker could be condensed into CNC operator?
Jackets:
- Would a Surface Engineer be categorized as Factory level management and engineering or corporate design?
- Are electrical roles at the factory necessary for jacket manufacturing? Does our map represent the different levels of electrical support needed or is it overrepresented?
- Which roles under factory level worker could be condensed into CNC operator?
Submarine Cables:
- Cable Testing Inspector (Factory Level Management and Engineering) and Cable Machine Operator, Cable Splicer, and Armoring Technician (Factory Level Workers) are cable-specific occupations... are these used, and if so, are the description, skills, and certifications correct? Are we missing any roles that may be specific solely to cable manufacturing and not other components?
- Which roles under factory level worker could be condensed into CNC operator?
- What job category do composite materials engineer, and thermoplastics engineer fall under? Factory-level Management and Engineer, Corporate Design, or both?
- Which roles under factory level worker could be condensed into CNC operator?
Offshore Substation:
- How does your organization define the process to manufacture the substation, given the modularity and blending of phases between manufacturing and assembly or construction? Are the roles we have in this list in line with what you consider to be manufacturing? Or does this list include some that should be only considered in assembly or construction?
- HVAC Installer, Platform Structure Inspector, and Plumber (Factory Level Workers) are substation-specific roles... do these look correct in applicability, description, skills, and certifications? Are we missing any roles that may be specific solely to substation manufacturing and not other components?
- Which roles under factory level worker could be condensed into CNC operator?
- Please review the questions and make changes within the spreadsheet. Upload your revised spreadsheet using the feedback form.
Jobs involved in ports and staging, such as terminal crews and logistics and management roles located portside.
View occupations by clicking Download Spreadsheet.
Provide feedback using this form
- NREL request recruiters, hiring managers, workforce professionals, and other industry members provide feedback on the occupational map.
- Specific questions for Preassembly and Assembly (Onshore):
- Would the port marine crew be relevant to the port operations, or would this be used in other phases (operations + maintenance, construction and installation, etc.)?
- Could the Port O+M tab be broken into different job classifications? How do you classify the workers that are within port operations (office roles? Facility maintenance? Corporate professionals?)
- Please review the questions and make changes within the spreadsheet. Upload your revised spreadsheet using the feedback form.
Preassembly and Assembly (Onshore)
Jobs involved in assembling components or equipment at a port location.
View occupations by clicking Download Spreadsheet.
Provide feedback using this form
- NREL request recruiters, hiring managers, workforce professionals, and other industry members provide feedback on the occupational map.
- Specific questions for Preassembly and Assembly (Onshore):
- Are environmental engineers and technicians still needed during final onshore assembly before loaded onto the vessels for transport?
- Should there be separate inspectors for towers, and foundations and blades in crew and maintenance or would it just be the QA/QC personnel?
- Please review the questions and make changes within the spreadsheet. Upload your revised spreadsheet using the feedback form.
Construction and Installation (Offshore)
Jobs operating at sea to install projects, including the marine crew, engineers, and installation crews.
View occupations by clicking Download Spreadsheet.
Provide feedback using this form
- NREL request recruiters, hiring managers, workforce professionals, and other industry members provide feedback on the occupational map.
- Specific questions for Construction and Installation (Offshore):
- Are the roles within Port Marine Crew utilized in offshore construction and installation?
- Are Geographical and Meteorological Technicians, Geoscientist, and Marine Biologist relevant roles for construction and installation?
- Under construction crew there are multiple Inspectors – Are these usually separated by components or is there one person that does these regardless of the component?
- Please review the questions and make changes within the spreadsheet. Upload your revised spreadsheet using the feedback form.
Operations and Maintenance
Jobs that involve operating and maintaining a project during its lifetime, including wind technicians and plant managers.
View Occupations
Provide feedback using this form
- NREL request recruiters, hiring managers, workforce professionals, and other industry members provide feedback on the occupational map.
- Specific questions for Operations and Maintenance:
- Under the inspection and Maintenance Crew sheet, I have many different types of inspectors. Should any of these be consolidated? What ones are different than wind turbine technicians?
- Operations Roles were intended to be more about the day-to-day operations of the wind farm, should onshore maintenance also be included here? Would that be hired by the O+M company or sent to the manufacturer?
- Please review the questions and make changes within the spreadsheet. Upload your revised spreadsheet using the feedback form.
These lists include all the occupations from the phases above but consolidated into manufacturing or across all roles.
View Occupations
Provide feedback using this form
- NREL request recruiters, hiring managers, workforce professionals, and other industry members provide feedback on the occupational map.
- Specific questions for these comprehensive lists:
- General: Provide a broad review, highlighting any red flags.
- Job Titles: Review the list of jobs and highlight any you don't believe fit as well as any that we are missing.
- Data Gaps: Review cells with no data and provide feedback on anything that you may include in there.
- Please review the questions and make changes within the spreadsheet. Upload your revised spreadsheet using the feedback form.
Approach
NREL partnered with Julius Education to create a standardized list of jobs across all phases of the offshore wind industry. NREL used its technology and workforce expertise to develop the framework and validate results while Julius Education used data mining and artificial intelligence to populate the spreadsheets with job posting data.
Julius Education collaborated with NREL’s Offshore Wind Group to develop a novel job, skill, certification, and education requirement taxonomy for the wind energy sector.
NREL created the following offshore wind occupational maps in collaboration with Julius Education using a structured methodology.
- We identified about 250 job titles that captured critical roles across the entire wind energy supply chain using past analyses, including the Offshore Wind Workforce Report and DOE’s Wind Career Map. These job titles were aligned to SOC codes and job descriptions were created, utilizing ONET, other job postings, and these past analyses.
- Julius Education collaborated with NREL’s Offshore Wind Group to develop a novel job, skill, certification, and education requirement taxonomy for the wind energy sector. The Julius team then utilized real-time labor market data to support the development of the taxonomy by matching job titles to industry relevant job postings, compiled from major job posting platforms like Indeed and LinkedIn.
- To ensure thorough job title coverage, Julius looked for both exact job title matches and used a language model to identify relevant job titles with similar meanings even if the wording was not an exact match.
- During their engagement, they matched over 28,000 job postings from the last 24 months as the source material for the taxonomy.
- After classifying relevant job postings, Julius processed the job descriptions into their constituent elements using the artificial intelligence and machine learning tools in their Energy Labor Market Intelligence Platform. This platform then classified the data to determine the most common skills, certifications, and educational requirements for these occupations.
- Each processed occupation taxonomy was then reviewed by subject matter experts at both Julius and NREL to ensure classification and processing accuracy. This process went back and forth multiple times, ensuring accurate data and model improvements throughout the process.
- For occupations with limited data in our job posting dataset, we supplemented with information from the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*NET and CareerOneStop repositories.
- All data was supplemented and verified through further research on the NREL side, ensuring that the model was producing accurate classifications and eliminating any irrelevant or misclassified data.
- NREL further complemented the existing data using three sets of occupational and training related codes:
- SOC: The Standard Occupation Codes (SOC) codes (2018) are utilized as a federal statistical standard by federal agencies to align workers into occupational categories.
- CIP: Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) codes (2020) were developed by the U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) are 6-digit codes used as the taxonomic scheme to track fields of study and program completion .
- RAPIDS: Registered Apprenticeship Partners Information Data system (RAPIDS) codes are from the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Apprenticeships and match Registered Apprenticeships Occupations to unique classification codes.
- Through existing crosswalks, both CIP codes and RAPIDS codes were aligned to the identified SOC codes, allowing for alignment amongst the classification structures and offshore wind energy related occupations. The programs/majors and RAPIDS occupations were added in using the following cross walks:
- Once the program/majors and RAPIDS occupations were aligned. The NREL team then determined if any of the following programs were not directly applicable or related to offshore wind energy, as the crosswalks were not previously filtered.
- The results of this approach are now published for industry review; feedback will be incorporated both into the taxonomy and into the underlying language model of the wind energy sector.
The following fields in the occupational maps are defined as:
- SOC Code and Title: The Standard Occupation Codes (SOC) codes (2018) are utilized as a federal statistical standard by federal agencies to align workers into occupational categories.
- Occupational Title: Suggested occupational title to use when discussing this occupation.
- Alternate Occupational Title: Other titles that may be used by industry when discussing this occupation.
- Job Description: Description of tasks and duties often done by this occupation.
- Certifications: List of potential certifications needed to or helpful to perform this occupation.
- Education Needed: Short description of educational requirements for the occupation, including degree type, on-the-job training, and apprenticeships.
- Programs/Majors: Relevant programs/majors matched to the SOC code using the CIP codes developed by the U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
- RAPIDS Occupations: Registered Apprenticeship Partners Information Data System (RAPIDS) occupations matched to SOC and CIP codes of the occupation.
- Skills Needed: Relevant skills and competencies to be effective in this occupation.
