Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Utility Workforce Coordinator

🎯 Role Definition

The Utility Workforce Coordinator manages day-to-day workforce scheduling and field crew logistics for a utility company. Responsibilities include forecasting labor needs, assigning crews and equipment, coordinating overtime and callouts, maintaining compliance with safety and union rules, supporting emergency response mobilization, and continuously improving workforce processes and systems. The role acts as a central liaison between operations, planning, HR, procurement, and field leadership to ensure timely completion of maintenance, construction, and outage restoration activities.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Field Crew Supervisor / Lead (Electrician, Lineman, Water Technician)
Dispatch Specialist or Call Center Coordinator within utilities
Workforce Planner or Scheduler in construction/field services

Advancement To:

Workforce Planning Manager / Operations Workforce Manager
Operations Manager or Field Services Manager
Emergency Management Coordinator / Storm Response Manager

Lateral Moves:

Crew Scheduler for Capital Projects
Contractor Management Specialist
Asset Management or Work Management Coordinator

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Coordinate daily scheduling and assignment of field crews, equipment, and contractors across multiple service territories to meet planned maintenance, construction schedules, and unplanned restoration needs while balancing cost, safety and customer expectations.
Monitor and manage workforce capacity and availability by reconciling timekeeping, vacation, leave, training, and restrictions; proactively adjust crew assignments to prevent delays and minimize overtime.
Lead after-hours dispatch and on-call coordination for emergency outages and storm response, ensuring timely mobilization of resources, accurate crew tracking, and continuous communication with operations leadership.
Serve as the primary point of contact for field supervisors and dispatchers to resolve workforce conflicts, escalate critical resource shortages, and provide real-time support during complex restoration events.
Develop and maintain scheduling templates, crew rotation plans, and standardized assignment processes that follow collective bargaining agreements, union rules, and regulatory requirements to ensure compliance and labor cost control.
Prepare and analyze daily, weekly, and monthly workforce metrics (e.g., labor utilization, overtime hours, crew productivity, mean time to repair) and deliver actionable insights to operations leaders to improve performance and reduce costs.
Manage crew onboarding logistics, including equipment assignments, access permissions, qualifications verification, and scheduling of required safety certifications and training to ensure crews are qualified and ready for assignments.
Maintain and optimize use of work management systems (e.g., IBM Maximo, SAP PM, Oracle, ClickSoftware, CrewSense) and GIS-based tools to assign orders, track progress, and synchronize field work with asset records and outage management systems.
Coordinate cross-functional planning with engineering, asset management, and project teams to ensure workforce availability aligns with capital projects, planned outages, and scheduled maintenance windows.
Administer overtime, callout, and emergency pay procedures in accordance with company policy and union agreements; create equitable and auditable assignment logs to support payroll and labor reconciliation.
Maintain accurate records of crew composition, certifications, hours worked, equipment usage, and job completion status to support billing, regulatory audits, and performance reviews.
Actively manage contractor and vendor workforce relationships; create schedules, verify contractor qualifications, track deliverables, and enforce safety and quality requirements to supplement in-house crews during peak demand.
Implement and maintain contingency staffing plans and surge staffing models for high-impact events such as storms, large outages, or planned system upgrades to rapidly scale response capacity.
Facilitate pre-job briefings and job assignment handoffs between dispatch and field crews, ensuring clear scope, safety briefings, required permits, and special instructions are communicated before work begins.
Collaborate with HR and training teams to identify workforce skill gaps and recommend targeted training, cross-training, and apprenticeship opportunities to improve long-term labor flexibility.
Drive continuous improvement initiatives for crew scheduling efficiency, including automation opportunities, reduced travel times, better crew-job matching, and standardized work procedures to increase productivity.
Oversee crew safety compliance tracking by ensuring all personnel maintain required certifications (e.g., CPR, confined space, switching procedures) and that safety incidents are logged, investigated, and remediated.
Participate in resource budgeting and forecasting by providing labor demand projections, anticipated overtime costs, and contractor usage estimates to support operational financial planning.
Coordinate materials and equipment staging with logistics and materials management teams so crews have the right items at the right location and time, minimizing job delays and return trips.
Prepare post-event reports and after-action reviews following major restoration events; identify lessons learned, staffing bottlenecks, communication breakdowns, and system improvements to strengthen future responses.
Ensure accurate work order assignment and closeout procedures, validating that completed work is recorded in the enterprise asset management system with appropriate documentation and timesheets.
Maintain proactive communication with customer service and outage communication teams to align crew status updates, estimated restoration times, and priority tagging of critical customers (hospitals, water treatment, public safety).
Coordinate real-time multi-crew logistics during complex jobs involving multiple trades, ensuring sequencing, traffic control, and inter-team dependencies are clearly planned and executed.
Manage special projects related to workforce transformation such as pilot scheduling tools, mobile field workforce rollouts, or optimization of crew territories to reduce travel and improve response times.

Secondary Functions

Generate and distribute standard and ad-hoc workforce reports, capacity dashboards, and executive summaries to operations leadership and stakeholders.
Support continuous data-driven improvements by validating data integrity between scheduling systems, timekeeping, and asset management platforms.
Assist in the development and rollout of mobile tools and dispatch enhancements, including user acceptance testing and field feedback coordination.
Participate in emergency operations center activities during major events, providing workforce status, resource needs, and shift change support.
Collaborate with procurement and contractor management to create scalable vendor rosters and pre-qualified contractor pools for surge capacity.
Maintain and update standard operating procedures (SOPs) and workforce playbooks reflecting best practices for scheduling, callouts, and crew safety checks.
Support reconciliation of payroll issues related to crew assignments, overtime disputes, and timecard corrections by providing documentation and assignment history.
Contribute to workforce modeling and scenario planning exercises to forecast labor needs for capital programs, regulatory requirements, and seasonal demand changes.
Assist HR with workforce planning analytics for recruitment prioritization, apprentice program needs, and retention strategies based on attrition and retirement forecasts.
Facilitate communication and training materials for field staff regarding new scheduling processes, system updates, and emergency callout procedures.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Workforce scheduling and crew management: adept at daily crew assignment, rotation planning, and surge staffing for utility field operations.
Outage and restoration coordination: experience using outage management systems (OMS) and coordinating multi-crew responses during storms and emergencies.
Enterprise Asset / Work Management systems: hands-on experience with IBM Maximo, SAP PM, Oracle Work Management, ClickSoftware, or similar.
GIS & mapping tools: familiarity with GIS-based workforce routing, asset overlays, and spatial coordination for field assignments.
Timekeeping and payroll reconciliation: ability to reconcile timesheets, overtime rules, callout pay and ensure payroll accuracy for field crews.
Labor relations & union agreement compliance: knowledge of collective bargaining terms as they relate to scheduling, overtime, and callout procedures.
Data analysis & reporting: proficiency with Excel (advanced), Power BI / Tableau, or SQL to produce workforce metrics, dashboards, and forecasts.
Contractor/vendor coordination: managing third-party crews, verifying qualifications, and integrating contractor schedules with internal staffing plans.
Emergency preparedness & EOC operations: experience coordinating staffing within an Emergency Operations Center and executing incident command procedures.
Mobile field technologies: familiarity with mobile work assignment apps, handheld devices, and real-time crew status updates.
Safety management systems: track certifications, permit-to-work compliance, and safety incident logging within EHS platforms.
Workforce forecasting & capacity planning: develop short- and long-term labor forecasts tied to capital plans and seasonal variations.

Soft Skills

Strong communicator: clear, concise liaison between field crews, operations leadership, HR, and contractors.
Problem solver: rapid decision-making and pragmatic prioritization under high-pressure outage and emergency conditions.
Detail-oriented: meticulous record keeping for assignments, certifications, and labor compliance.
Collaborative: works cross-functionally to align scheduling with engineering, procurement, and customer communications.
Adaptable: thrives in dynamic environments with changing priorities and last-minute resource shifts.
Conflict resolution: handles crew disputes, overtime fairness concerns, and union-related questions with professionalism.
Customer-focused: maintains service restoration priority for critical customers and communicates timelines effectively.
Analytical thinker: turns operational data into actionable workforce optimization recommendations.
Influential leader: able to gain buy-in for process changes from field personnel and leadership.
Time management: manages multiple competing requests and deadlines while keeping crew operations on schedule.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:
High school diploma or GED required; equivalent combination of education and progressive experience in utility operations or field workforce coordination accepted.

Preferred Education:
Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Operations Management, Supply Chain, Electrical/Mechanical Engineering, Public Administration, or related field.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Operations Management
Business Administration
Electrical or Mechanical Engineering
Human Resources / Labor Relations
Public Administration / Emergency Management

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:
3–7 years of progressive experience in utility operations, field crew coordination, dispatch, or workforce planning with increasing responsibility.

Preferred:
5+ years’ experience coordinating utility field crews (electric, gas, or water), with proven experience in outage coordination, labor forecasting, and enterprise work management systems. Experience with unionized workforces and emergency response coordination preferred.