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Debate kit Grade 12 Careers & CTE

Pellinore Flats: In-House Pipe Crew or Contracted Replacement?

A grade 12 careers debate kit on whether a fictional water district should staff its own main replacement crew, with a cost table, two-sided evidence, and a rubric.

Objectives

  1. Students will argue for and against staffing a utility construction crew using cost and workforce evidence.
  2. Students will compute and use a marginal cost per mile to support a staffing recommendation.
  3. Students will describe the jobs, credentials, and career ladders created by each option.

Vocabulary

Apprenticeship
A way to learn a skilled job by working alongside experienced workers while getting paid. Water utilities use apprenticeships to train new operators and technicians.

Also: marginal cost, capital equipment, risk transfer, restoration, institutional knowledge

Teacher overview

This two-session debate is staged as a budget workshop before a fictional water district board, with an affirmative team arguing for a district-employed pipe crew, a negative team arguing for contracted replacement, and the rest of the class seated as board members who question both sides. The question divides real utilities, because the choice is partly about money and partly about what kind of workforce a district wants to keep. One misconception recurs in student arguments: many treat the in-house option as automatically cheaper because there is no contractor profit, and then overlook the equipment purchase and the idle time between projects. Point out before preparation begins that the evidence file contains both a per-foot cost and a one-time equipment cost, and that a serious argument has to use them together.

Pellinore Flats: In-House Pipe Crew or Contracted Replacement? — Grade 12 Careers & CTE
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Resolution & Background

Resolution: The Pellinore Flats Water District should replace its aging water mains with a district construction crew rather than contracting the work to outside firms.

Pellinore Flats is a fictional district serving about 41,000 people through 96 miles of water main. Its engineering staff has identified 22 miles of cast iron installed before 1935 as the replacement backlog, and the board has committed to replacing it over the next fifteen years. The district currently bids each project to outside contractors. The operations manager has proposed hiring a seven-person crew instead, made up of a crew lead, an equipment operator, two pipe layers, a laborer, a restoration technician, and an apprentice.

Background that both sides should accept as accurate:

  • The ASCE 2025 Infrastructure Report Card gave US drinking water a C- and wastewater a D+ (source: ASCE 2025 Report Card for America's Infrastructure).
  • A water main breaks in the US roughly every two minutes (source: ASCE Report Card talking points).
  • EPA's needs assessment estimates $625 billion in drinking-water investment is needed over 20 years. Distribution pipes account for about two-thirds of that need (source: EPA Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey and Assessment).
  • About 10,000 openings for water and wastewater operators are projected each year from 2025 to 2035 (source: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook). This figure covers treatment plant and system operators specifically, not construction trades.

Cost figures from the fictional district's engineering staff:

Item Contracted District crew
Installed cost per foot of new main $310 $255
One-time equipment purchase (excavator, vac truck, trench boxes) none $1.9 million
Crew availability for emergency main breaks on call, scheduled around other clients same day
Who holds the schedule risk the contractor the district

Role notes:

  • Affirmative team. Two speakers take the cost case. Two take the workforce case.
  • Negative team. Two speakers take the cost case. Two take the risk case.
  • Board members. Each writes one question for each team before the debate. Each votes at the close with a written reason.
  • Chair. One student keeps time, calls speakers in order, and rules on relevance.

Evidence File

Case for the district crew

  1. The backlog is long enough to keep a crew busy. At the fictional district's figures, one mile at 5,280 feet costs about $1.64 million contracted and about $1.35 million with a district crew, a difference of roughly $290,000 per mile. The $1.9 million equipment purchase is recovered after roughly six and a half miles, and the backlog is 22 miles (source: fictional Pellinore Flats engineering estimate).
  2. Emergency response improves. A main breaks somewhere in the country roughly every two minutes, and aging systems generate unscheduled work. The fictional district's own crew can be sent to a break the same day. A contractor's crew comes when its schedule opens (source: ASCE Report Card talking points; fictional district operations manager).
  3. The district keeps what its crews learn. Records of buried pipe are incomplete in most older systems. A permanent crew learns where valves, services, and abandoned lines actually sit (source: testimony of the fictional Pellinore Flats operations manager).
  4. It builds a local career ladder. The proposed crew includes an apprentice position. The fictional district also plans to pay for distribution operator licensing. Crew members could then move into plant and system operator roles, which face about 10,000 openings a year nationally (source: fictional district staffing plan; BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook).
  5. Restoration quality is easier to hold. The fictional district's public works director reports that pavement and lawn repair draws the most resident complaints on pipe projects. A district crew answers to the board rather than to a contract closeout date (source: fictional public works director's annual complaint summary).

Case for contracted replacement

  1. The per-mile saving is smaller than it looks. The fictional $255 per foot figure assumes the crew works productively all year. Weather, vacancies, and permit delays leave crews idle for part of most seasons. The district still pays wages, benefits, and equipment financing during that idle time (source: fictional Pellinore Flats finance director's review).
  2. Filling the seven positions may be the hardest part of the proposal. The fictional district has held a maintenance vacancy open for eleven months, while nationally the sector faces heavy retirements and roughly 10,000 operator openings a year, so the plan depends on labor that is already in short supply (source: fictional district human resources report; BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook).
  3. Contractors carry risk the district otherwise absorbs. A contract can assign responsibility for schedule overruns, damaged utilities, and worker injury claims, along with bonding and insurance. Under the district crew option, the district holds all of it (source: fictional district legal counsel's memo).
  4. Funding arrives unevenly. National drinking-water need runs to $625 billion over 20 years, and distribution pipes are about two-thirds of it. Grant and loan programs are competitive and arrive in lumps. A contracted program can scale up in a strong funding year and pause in a lean one. A permanent crew cannot (source: EPA Drinking Water Infrastructure Needs Survey and Assessment; fictional district finance director).
  5. Some of the work would be contracted in either case. The fictional district's backlog includes three crossings that call for trenchless installation, and that work needs equipment and certification the proposed crew would not have (source: fictional Pellinore Flats engineering scope review).

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Rubric
Criterion Advanced Proficient Developing Emerging
Use of cost evidence Uses the per-foot figures and the equipment cost together to state a breakeven point and applies it to the 22-mile backlog Uses both cost figures correctly but does not connect them to the backlog length Cites one cost figure without relating it to the other Argues cost without using the table
Workforce reasoning Names specific roles, credentials, and the hiring risk each option carries, and distinguishes construction trades from licensed operator roles Describes the workforce consequences of each option in general but accurate terms Mentions jobs without naming roles or credentials Does not address the workforce question
Rebuttal quality Restates the opposing point accurately, then answers it with a specific figure or source Answers the opposing point with relevant evidence Responds to the topic rather than to the point made Does not respond to opposing arguments
Deliberation and delivery Speaks within time, yields to the chair, asks a question that advances the discussion, and adapts to earlier speakers Speaks within time and follows the format with clear organization Runs over time or reads prepared text without adapting Does not follow the format or does not participate

Differentiation

Support

Provide these students with the cost arithmetic already worked out for the fictional district, a one-page card naming the seven proposed crew positions, and a speaking outline that supplies the opening sentence of each turn. Assign them as board members in the first session so they write questions before speaking, then place them on a team in the second session.

Extension

Ask advanced students to prepare a hybrid proposal for the second session, such as a smaller district crew that handles service lines, valve replacement, and emergency repairs while contractors take the long main runs and the trenchless crossings. They must state which fictional cost figures their proposal changes and answer the strongest point from each side in writing.

ELL supports

Pre-teach marginal cost, capital equipment, backlog, restoration, and risk transfer with short definitions and a labeled street cross-section showing a main, a service line, and pavement restoration. Provide rebuttal sentence frames such as "The negative team said ___, but the cost table shows ___," and allow notes in the student's first language during preparation.

Extensions

Many utilities publish a capital improvement plan that lists pipe replacement miles and budget by year. Have students locate one for any city, identify whether the work is described as in-house or contracted, and write a paragraph explaining what that choice implies about the jobs that utility offers.