We publish special sections routinely throughout the year to highlight Alaska’s major industries, including oil and gas, mining, fishing, construction, transportation, engineering, and healthcare. And while we deeply value our opportunities to focus on (and inform our readers about) a specific industry, the reality is many of Alaska’s support service companies provide goods, services, and expertise that span multiple industries. Some companies provide a niche service that benefits any natural resource project, while others meet a variety of project needs but only within a certain geological area. Our goal in this special section is to highlight the vast and varied capabilities of Alaska’s industry support organizations.

Trade associations and advocacy groups play an important part in supporting the companies and employees working in Alaska’s major industries, often acting as the bridge that connects businesses, educational institutions, nonprofits, and government organizations.

According to Rebecca Logan, CEO of The Alaska Support Industry Alliance, it’s not a matter of how many companies the association supports, but if there are any that it doesn’t. “In the state of Alaska, everybody’s in the support industry for oil, gas, and mining,” she says. “Our mission statement is that we promote responsible development of Alaska’s oil, gas, and mineral resources… what we really do is advocate for our members to the owner/operators; advocate on behalf of the industries to state government and federal government; and advocate for our members in the industry to the general public, to keep them apprised of the status and the health of the industry and any state or federal policies that are impacting industry.”

That advocacy takes many forms. One is the AK Headlamp, a blog that’s updated regularly with information on energy and politics related to industry. “That reaches between 30,000 and 40,000 people a day,” Logan says.

The Alliance also organizes events, mainly for its members. As an example, recently it presented a virtual update for its members on the Qilak LNG 1 Project, a $5 billion proposition to establish a liquefaction plant a few miles offshore of Point Thomson, allowing LNG to be shipped directly from the North Slope to primarily Asian markets. The company expects to complete a feasibility study late this year or in early 2021, according to Qilak LNG Chairman and CEO Mead Treadwell, with a goal to begin production in 2026/2027 if all goes according to plan.

If the Qilak LNG 1 Project is constructed, it could create 200 construction jobs in Alaska, as well as 200 operational positions on the North Slope and in Southcentral, which would result in many indirect job opportunities, as well. Being given a heads up on this kind of project helps support companies spot potential contracts, services, or sales opportunities.

In addition to broad-based advocacy, informative tools like the AK Headlamp (which Logan writes), events, and educational opportunities, The Alliance also provides specific services to companies one-on-one. “We have a program where we partner with our members to really help them promote their business, so we spend a lot of time every day working with individual members to help them on marketing ideas for their companies,” Logan explains.

The Alliance also advocates on behalf of Alaskans by promoting Alaska hire and the utilization of Alaska entities. “About 80 percent of our members are Alaska-based companies, and then there are about 20 percent that have had a strong Alaska presence for twenty, thirty, or forty years but are headquartered elsewhere,” Logan says. Alliance member companies employ approximately 28,000 Alaskans, which is 8 percent of the state’s residents. “I do spend a lot of time working with our owner/operators just to make sure that we’re constantly promoting Alaska hire and Alaska companies,” Logan says.

And while it clearly benefits support companies, Logan says it’s a smart move for owner/operators as well. “The companies who’ve worked in Alaska have an experience that outside companies can’t even begin to understand… the working conditions on the North Slope are very unique,” she says. “It’s [also] less expensive for the owner-operator because you don’t have people who are traveling from the Lower 48—you have people that live here, that are headquartered here, who live, work, and play here.

“COVID-19 has really highlighted how critical that is, because that hit and procedures were changed on the North Slope, where everybody’s two on/two off. Well that went away fast: it was more like four on/two off. And then what started happening was that people who were in the Lower 48 who were working on the North Slope had to have their four weeks on, then they could go home for two weeks, but then if they wanted to come back—and this is still in place—and work on the North Slope, first they had to quarantine here for two weeks… It very quickly became cost prohibitive to try to integrate people from out-of-state into the COVID working environment.”

While The Alliance advocates for the overall health of Alaska’s industries and the companies that operate in them, Logan emphasizes a focus on the support organizations. “Even though we’ve been around for forty-one years, even people in our industry don’t realize that the owner/operators are not allowed to be members of our organization,” she says. “That doesn’t mean we don’t get along—in fact, we spend a ton of time with them—but, again, we were formed to advocate on behalf of our members to the owner/operators.”

The Resource Development Council (RDC) is aligned with The Alliance on many issues, and RDC Executive Director Marleanna Hall says in the past the two organizations have worked with other trade associations to the benefit of Alaska’s industries. “Some of the best things we’ve done with other trade associations is invite public leadership—federal level and public officials—to visit Alaska and to speak to our different members,” Hall says. “We try to bring people to Alaska that will help demonstrate that Alaska is open for business… and we work closely with other trade associations on projects like ballot measure campaigns.”

RDC’s mission is “to grow Alaska through responsible development” and encompasses all forms of natural resource development, including mining, oil and gas, and renewable resources like fisheries, forestry, and tourism. “For us, that really entails seeing development done in a way that helps protect the environment, helps protect the people around it, helps provide for the people around it, and helps give back to the state,” Hall says. “Without resource development in Alaska, studies have said that Alaska’s economy would be one-third the size.”

The association’s membership includes companies that work in fishing, forestry, mining, oil and gas, and tourism; all twelve of the Alaska Native regional corporations and many of the Alaska Native village corporations; trade and labor entities; municipalities and boroughs; and other support service companies. RDC doesn’t have set restrictions on which companies can or cannot apply for membership, but “we don’t typically have a lot of people that oppose resource development that try to get involved in our membership,” Hall laughs.

One of RDC’s goals is to have many voices participating in resource development; the best way to make sure a project benefits everyone is for all key stakeholders weigh in. Sometimes that’s easier said than done, especially for projects in remote areas (as most of them are) or when dealing with limited technology or transportation.

Since COVID-19 began its steady disruption of everything, Hall and the RDC team have been looking for ways to continue to operate optimally and provide value to members. “Typically—not during COVID-19 times—we’d be advocating at the state and federal level and rallying the troops to testify, which we’re still doing, just in a different manner,” she says. “We’ve had to change the way that we approach responding to public comment opportunities, for example, but I feel we’ve been successful in getting the voice of Alaskans who want responsible resource development to participate, whether it’s been phoning in or testifying via Zoom webinars to different agencies that have held public comment periods in the last couple of months.”

Hall says there is a silver lining to the move online: it has become easier for some people to participate. “They’re not having to go sit in a room for two to three hours and wait in line… you don’t have to go into Anchorage to the Dena’ina Center or elsewhere to participate, you can be at your cabin in Willow.”

Representing such a wide array of interests can be challenging. Looking around the state today, interests in tourism and forestry don’t always align, and the Pebble mine is a prominent example of resource development interests at odds. “We have our mission and we would never put one project over another project; we would never put one industry over another industry,” Hall says. “We try to include everyone’s perspectives in different positions that we take as an organization.”

RDC has navigated Alaska’s sometimes complicated development landscape for decades and is celebrating its 45th anniversary—and its long history of educating and informing Alaskans—this year. “For much of the last fifteen years, we’ve made an effort to have everything we do—whether it’s a comment letter, our breakfast meetings, the conference presentations—all of that we do we try to put on our website. As we celebrate our 45th anniversary, it’s important to let people know that we have a ton of information on our website… and these resources are free to anyone because we want our fellow Alaskans to be well-informed,” Hall explains.

The Alaska Safety Alliance focuses on education and training on an individual level. “Our priorities are to make sure that Alaskans are ready and qualified for jobs with Alaska’s major process industries—energy, mining, fishing, construction, maintenance—and upgrading the skills of our Alaskan workforce to prepare them for roles in those industries,” says Executive Director Cari-Ann Carty.

While the Alaska Safety Alliance has been strengthening Alaska’s workforce since 1999, it hasn’t been doing so under that name. Originally established as the Alaska Process Industry Careers Consortium, or APICC, the organization changed its name last October to the Alaska Safety Alliance. “[The original name] hit the mark for what we did at the time, which was really development of process technology training across the state,” Carty says. “Since that time we’ve grown and expanded; we serve a multitude of industries, from maritime to construction to mining. Anywhere there’s this kind of safety or regulatory type of training that’s required.”

The Alaska Safety Alliance partners with various entities to develop collaborative solutions to serve the workforce needs of industry in Alaska, and those solutions are sorely needed. According to the 2020 Annual Business Confidence Index Report presented by the Anchorage Economic Development Corporation and prepared by McDowell Group, 71 percent of Anchorage businesses stated that the availability of a professional/technical workforce is a barrier to business growth.

“There’s not a single method that we use,” Carty explains. “They range quite broadly from creating US Department of Labor-sponsored apprenticeship programs to working at the University of Alaska to implement the process technology degree program. It could be teacher externships, student scholarships, safety training… we don’t limit ourselves except for does it fall within our mission to make sure Alaskans are prepared and ready to go to work for our industries.”

How those methods are developed depends on information from the companies the Alaska Safety Alliance serves. “We need to know what the workforce needs are going to be in six months, a year, two years from now,” Carty says. “Once there is already a need, it’s really difficult for us to meet that need with Alaskans because we need to get them trained up and ready to fit in.”

Carty sees several clear advantages to putting Alaskans to work on Alaska projects; from an employer perspective, hiring qualified personnel locally reduces the amount of time it takes to fill a position, reduces the time necessary to prepare for an upcoming project, and saves money. “In turn, [employees] feel kind of a connection to the environment, to the state, to their community, and reinvest in that. There’s an advantage on both sides, for the employers and for Alaskans, to have this symbiotic relationship.”

She says research shows that Alaska projects hiring Alaskans is also more efficient, as there’s higher turnover when employees are brought in from Outside.

As with The Alliance and RDC, the Alaska Safety Alliance relies on partnerships with various entities to deliver needed services. “We are so blessed that we have such an amazing relationship with great organizations like AVTEC, Iļisaġvik College, MAPTS; with all the university systems statewide; or with outside training organizations, whether they’re for-profit, nonprofit, or with the state of Alaska—all those resources can come together in the same room and I can meet with all of them at once and we can talk about how we’re going to collaborate to make things happen for our industries. It’s challenging, but it’s the most fantastic job I’ve ever had.”

Each of these associations has a unique mission and different approaches to meeting it. They are a part of the massive network of industry support service entities that allow Alaska’s world-class projects to not just get off the ground but operate safely, efficiently, and often longer than originally anticipated.