Knowledge worth passing on

George Hildebrand isn"t retiring. He"s just testing the waters.

And why not? As project manager at George Third & Son Ltd., a structural fabricator near Vancouver, British Columbia, he"s been with the company for only 44 years. During that time he"s managed a host of projects, building everything from roller coasters to airports, and even two ski jumps, which were completed late last year for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Gamesa project we"ll be covering in an upcoming print edition.

We"re calling it a soft retirement," said his boss, company President Rob Third, grandson of the founder. Third told me on the phone yesterday that George is taking the summer off. Sort of. He"s coming to the office today, of course, to check on some projects. People can reach him on his cell phone. And he regularly checks his company e-mail.

"By fall, he"ll probably be on some projects, Third said, chuckling.

Hildebrand"s decades of experience will be getting harder to replace in the coming years. Down in the lower 48, as the graying of America continues, more employers are wooing boomers to stay on the job. (In Hildebrand"s case, little wooing was required. He told me he has a passion for what he"s been doing for 44 years, and it"s easy to see, judging by the way he talks about his work.)

Many older workers are staying put, some because they want to, others because they need to. Regardless, it"s a good thing many of them are, because it turns out the U.S. economy needs experienced workers, not just in manufacturing but everywhere. The fact that there are so few of them is one reason the U.S. economy has sputtered in recent years.

The biggest reason [for the economic slowdown] is that there are now fewer workers in the American economy, said Fareed Zarkaria, editor of Newsweek International, on a blog he posted this week. The baby boomers are beginning to retire.

He contends that not only do boomers have a key part to play in maintaining America"s productivity, but their retirement could have detrimental effects on the country"s fiscal health. As Zarkaria put it, The retirement of the baby boomers is going to have a crippling effect on all government budgetsfederal, state, and local. Unless entitlements are trimmed substantially, America is headed for fiscal bankruptcy.

Debate has continued to swirl on the subject in recent years. Will retirees cause a brain drain that will slam the emergency brakes on the country"s economic engine, which already isn"t running at full speed? Or will the effect be more gradual, as more workers buy into Hildebrand"s brand of soft retirement?

From a metal fabrication perspective, it"s amazing to think about what Hildebrand and others like him have seen during their years of service. They"ve gone from manual machines to paper tapes to computer numerical control; from engineering drawings to CAD/CAM to digital work flows.

While many at retirement"s doorstep have embraced technology, others have resisted change, as computers and machines automate skills that before had taken years of practice to perfect. But the resistance, I think, misses the larger point. You can"t change the physics that happen where the rubber hits the roador, more aptly for our industry, where the tool hits the metal. Metal still fuses under the welding gun, sheet metal still bends under the tool, project management still needs human interaction, and no computer can automate a person"s understanding of such processes.

That"s why I"m glad to see there are people in this industry like Hildebrand, who pass on that core knowledge that will never change in metal fabrication, no matter how automated the shop floor becomes.