Peering into a crystal ball that points to a critical shortage of workers in the future, Danish electrical contractors are starting to see the hazy outlines of a partial remedy, one they’re now actively exploring: robotics and automation.
Spurred by labor shortages crimping their businesses now and projections for a nearly 7,000 electrician deficit in just five years, an association of employers and one representing electrical workers took part in a 2024 field exploration of electrical worker tasks that could potentially be done with robots.
Conducted by global automation advisory, HowToRobot, the study had experts observe and analyze over a period of weeks more than two dozen electrical installation and maintenance tasks performed in live commercial work by select electrical contractor members of TEKNIQ Arbejdsgiverne and their workers, members of Dansk El-Forbund. A report on the findings issued in August 2024 identified 13 tasks suitable for existing automation technologies or those in early-stage development. The list included cable pulling behind ceilings and walls, hole drilling for electrical installations, measuring/marking, and channel cutting for wiring.
Now, the groups are digesting the findings, framing them for members, and looking to next steps for further study/implementation. So far, at least two contractors have moved to the next stage of identifying and working with robotics suppliers on possible applications, one being exoskeletons for heavy lifting. And of the numerous tasks analyzed cable pulling has been judged the one with greatest potential to be automated.
“We’ve seen that our robotics project has managed to stir up quite the excitement among our members,” says TEKNIQ deputy director, Maria Schougaard Berntsen. “Application of the insights of this analysis will most likely require industry leaders to try some of the technologies that the study found were promising.”
She says the study has helped the association grow more convinced of automation’s potential and is committed to encouraging further examination that will “eventually be turned into concrete results for the industry at large.”
That will likely take time as contractors taking the lead will move through the process of connecting with technology suppliers, testing and refining solutions, and doing real-world cost-benefit analyses. HowToRobot’s Mikkel Viager, the lead advisor on the study and the August report, says the likely path forward will entail identifying tasks most amenable to some form of automation followed by rigorous examination of how it could be deployed.
“There will be a need to get the iterative process going in a collaboration with automation solutions providers,” he says.
Since future labor availability concerns are the primary driver of the industry’s exploration of robotics, Viager says contractors will prioritize the study of solutions that could reduce the quantity of labor needed and take the strain off workers.
“One approach will be to look at the low-hanging fruit, things that with little effort can reduce the amount of labor needed – for some tasks about 20%,” he says. “And then there’s the assisted automation technologies that could lessen worker fatigue, helping workers stay longer on the job in their careers.”
The study found automating tasks could potentially impact productivity, project quality and work environment (see Figure).
Based on the study’s findings, TEKNIQ sees automation in all its forms helping on the labor front. Technologies already in the market that haven’t been fully tapped, Bernsten says, “would free up 929 full-time equivalents in the Danish industry.” But investing more heavily in deploying existing automation and developing and implementing new applications, she says, could result in “4,660 full-time equivalents” being automated. That would address 70% of the industry’s expected worker shortage in 2030.
While ripe for automation, electrical construction and maintenance work, like other construction skilled trades-oriented work, does face hurdles in adoption, Viager says. Unlike manufacturing, where robotics is flourishing, construction presents challenges tied to unpredictability. Some applications, such as robots for measuring and laying out spaces based on blueprints are becoming commonplace, but many utilized effectively in controlled and repetitive process plant settings aren’t easily transferrable.
“Up until now, it has been challenging for automation technologies to work reliably in unstructured construction settings and adopt to unforeseen things,” he says. “But that’s where artificial intelligence can make a key difference in the future by enabling robots to adapt autonomously to their environment.”
Regardless of the obstacles and the potentially long path to adoption, Danish electrical contractors appear eager to find a way to jump on the automation train to address their labor dilemma. Inspired by the Denmark production industry’s strong embrace of robotics, the electrical contracting industry, Bernsten says, is eager to see what can be adapted, mindful though that applications are very different and must be approached differently.
“We’ve learned that the potential for robotics and automation in our industry is much greater than we had dared hope to anticipate,” she says. “As such, this is a path that the industry needs to embark upon.”
