Shortage of personnel at companies is the focus
The 27th DCA Annual Congress, which took place last week in Leipzig, was virtually fully booked for the first time with over 210 participants from Europe and the USA. In addition to an attractive congress program, the steady growth in participants is also due to the steady increase in members in Germany and especially throughout Europe. While just over 100 member companies were active in the DCA in 2018, the association will count over 170 member companies by the end of the year. An increase of about 70% in 5 years. Tendency rising!
After an introductory highly interesting lecture by Ralf Schuster, geopolitical expert from Frankfurt am Main, who opened the congress with a presentation on “Geopolitics – an explanation for everything?”, the DCA offered, as always, very interesting lectures and a varied supporting program on both days, which met with great approval among the participants.
The central point of this year’s event was a panel discussion on the upcoming large cable routes (including Südlink, Südostlink) on Thursday afternoon. The panel discussion was moderated by journalist Dr. Antje Wöhnke and President Jorn Stoelinga. During the lively discussion round, which was divided into three sections, topics such as “quality of the tender, technical implementation, duration of approval procedures or the ever-increasing shortage of personnel” were discussed first and foremost. As a result of the approximately three-hour round in the fully occupied congress room of the Hotel The Westin in Leipzig, it could be stated that only through a comprehensive dialogue between project sponsor, planner and client and all other parties involved in the project, the present major tasks can be mastered both in terms of time and technology. The DCA is available as a supporter at any time, so president Jorn Stoelinga.
The topic of “shortage of skilled workers”, which is not only circulating in the HDD sector, was seen by many participants as by far the biggest obstacle to implementation. Delivery times for equipment or materials could be taken into account in planning. The use of machines without personnel is not yet possible despite AI. Among other things, participants called for the establishment of a separate training branch for the next generation of HDD personnel and thus to make the HDD profession as a whole more attractive. This is a task that must also be tackled from the association’s point of view.
At the evening event in the Panorama Tower in the heart of the city, discussions continued for a long time with a great view over Leipzig and initial solutions were found for the problems discussed. On Friday, the conference continued with various HDD project presentations from all over the world, including Peru and the UK.
The conference proceedings and the presentations as well as further information about the event can be downloaded in the members area soon.
See you again at the 28th edition of the DCA Annual Congress on 09-11th Oct 2024 in Barcelona, Spain. Please save the date! Please save the date!