New Line Life Podcast: Training Tomorrow's Field Workforce in Puerto Rico

As LUMA Energy continues to improve resiliency and power reliability on the island of Puerto Rico, the utility is training new apprentices to work alongside its field workforce. In June 2021, Quanta Services Inc. and ATCO launched LUMA Energy through a joint venture.

To train tomorrow's workforce and meet the need for more lineworkers, they later brought in a Department of Labor-registered apprenticeship program to replace the existing in-house training by the previous administration. During this Line Life Podcast episode, Lindsey Petteplace, LUMA's workforce transition manager and Jorge Olivero, apprenticeship coordinator for operations for LUMA, share the story of how the program has continued to evolve to prepare the apprentices for long-term and financially rewarding careers in the line trade. 

These apprentices study and train at LUMA College, a chapter of Northwest Lineman College in Puerto Rico. At the training facility, they learn how to scale everything from wood to steel to concrete and fiberglass poles and train on the TransBanker mobile transformer training simulator. After they successfully finish the 13-week Utility Lineman Program, they then start working in the field on projects to power Puerto Rico.