NGS workers redeploy to new jobs in Phoenix

Posted by Navajo Times | Sep 19, 2019 | Business |

By Krista Allen
Special to the Times

DA’DEESTL’IN HÓTSAA, Ariz.

Nicole Kee McCarty was one of 15 certified operations specialists who ran the 2,250-megawatt Navajo Generating Station. Now, she is being retrained to be an information technology business analyst at Salt River Project in Phoenix.

“We are going to be accumulating 2,000 OJT (on-the-job training) hours – it’s been exciting,” McCarty, who started her new job Aug. 5, said in a telephone interview. “It’s a new experience.” McCarty, 34, was one of 15 certified operations specialists who sat in the control room at NGS, switching buttons to control the entire plant, which produces electricity for populations in this state, California and Nevada. NGS is set to close in just 94 days.

Today, she is one of 10 former NGS employees in the state’s first tech-apprenticeships, “Apprenti,” which was introduced to SRP through the Greater Phoenix Chamber Foundation early last year. Apprenti became a solution to address the redeployment effort of NGS employees into Phoenix-area positions.

McCarty said there are a lot of deadlines, creating flow charts for business processes, and documenting details to help projects come together smoothly. The goal is to train apprentices to identify tech challenges in business, find solutions to those challenges and implement solutions, according to the program’s website. “So, the transition from NGS, my industrial job site, and then going over into a school setting (at the instructional site in Page), it was different,” McCarty said. “We were always learning at the power plant. We always had new training, new applications that we had to learn about. So studying wasn’t necessarily new, but the subject matter was new.”

McCarty started working at NGS in 2004 when she was 18 – the year her daughter, Charmaine, turned 2. Charmaine, better known as “Charm,” is 18 years old now. Originally from Naatsis’áán-Rainbow City, Utah, McCarty was living in Tonalea-Red Lake, Arizona, and when things didn’t work out she and her daughter moved to a women’s shelter in Page where she got a job through one of the domestic violence services programs. Her only aspiration was to make life better for Charm. To do that, she started looking for high-paying jobs, specifically at NGS, where she constantly hassled the human resource department about any job openings.

“Eventually they told me about the O&M I (Operations and Maintenance I) Fundamentals School that they had everyone go through that was coming up,” McCarty said. “I just wanted to be anything there,” she said. “My initial goal was just to be a janitor who made 14 to 15 dollars an hour cleaning. I was like, ‘I’ll clean your toilets for that much!’

“The HR lady told me about the strength test — as long as I could life a 50-pound dog food bag at Walmart, I would pass,” she said. “I went to Walmart and I tried it. I was like, ‘Ah! I got this!’”

In a 2013 interview with the Navajo Times inside the control room at NGS, McCarty said the school consisted of engineers and people who had gone through years of college. And then there was her – who graduated early from Monument Valley High in Kayenta in 2002 and whose resume listed a bargain store, pricing clothes and working a cash register.

McCarty passed all the required tests, impressed her interviewers, and completed the O&M I school. She was the youngest person to complete the school at that time. “Being at NGS for 15 years, there was a sense of loss” when the closure was announced, McCarty said. “I thought I was going to have that stability a few years longer,” she said. “When I did stop working at NGS, I thought it was going to be voluntarily, not necessarily forced.

“I originally got the NGS job to raise my daughter and she’s 18,” she said. “I kept her alive. I figured it was going to be my turn soon, but I didn’t think it’d be forced. I thought it was going to be a controlled decision.”

McCarty said her employer, Salt River Project, provides its workers with high-quality health insurance and employee benefits that are difficult to give up. “I don’t see another company that can provide that,” she said. “I really enjoy what I have with SRP. I’m still going to go back to Page to visit my family because that’s where all of my family is, and in Navajo Mountain. So there’s going to be a lot of travel to see family. But for actually moving back there – maybe when it’s time to retire.”

SRP’s director of talent management, Tina Drews, said the goal of the Apprenti program at SRP is to provide opportunities to highly skilled employees during the redeployment of NGS. “Information technology is a growing area, especially in the utility industry, and we want to provide apprenticeships that will fill our needs for the work force of the future,” Drews said in a statement.

Skyler June, 33, is also an apprentice and one of the 10 former NGS employees who transferred to Phoenix. June and McCarty are in the same program. June worked at NGS for 11 years as an O&M specialist keeping an eye on the water, steam, fire and coal systems. “I’ve always been good at different jobs, but a quiet office is definitely a different environment from being in a potentially hazardous, safety-critical setting,” said June, who along with the other apprentices will remain paid SRP employees as they undergo three months of intense classroom instruction and a year of on-the-job training at an SRP facility in Phoenix.

“Moving my entire life down here to a hot settling, and an apartment with a crowded neighborhood that I’m not used to, is different,” June added. “But I’ve always been one to try to achieve and climb up the ladder.”

The challenge now is “finding a different ladder,” he said.

Drews said after they successfully complete the apprenticeship requirements, the apprentices will start their new tech careers within the company. McCarty, June and their Apprenti classmates will remain paid SRP employees as they undergo three months of intense classroom instruction and a year of on-the-job training at an SRP facility in the Valley.

After successfully completing the apprenticeship requirements, they will start their new tech careers with SRP. All apprentices who complete the program will be granted positions in IT. “SRP is rethinking the way it develops and trains employees,” Drews said. “SRP has exceptional apprenticeships for 11 crafts and trades, and now we are pioneering into professional apprenticeships. I hope we can be a model for other organizations.”