Enhancing knowledge management and skills retention in OT protection and control environments

GOOSE and Sampled Values, factors such as network latency, jitter, and VLAN configuration have become as vital to grid stability as fault physics. However, this technological shift has created a significant professional skills gap within the industry. Many experienced engineers remain proficient in conventional protection principles but lack the network protocol competency required to diagnose modern failure modes, such as blocked multicast streams or time synchronization errors. This challenge is further compounded by a heavy reliance on external vendors (OEMs) for turnkey projects, which often results in a loss of internal utility expertise and operational autonomy. To mitigate these risks, utilities must move away from a purely theoretical understanding of digital systems and toward a model of practical, hands-on competency. To bridge this gap, the industry must adopt a structured approach to training that centres on virtualisation and simulation-based platforms. By utilizing digital twins of substations, engineers can safely design, test, and troubleshoot complex IEC 61850 architectures without risking live infrastructure. This environment is essential for developing the ability to correlate physical power events with network traffic, this allows for more effective responses to both technical failures and cybersecurity threats. Ultimately, ensuring grid resilience requires a formal framework of certification and continuous recertification that integrates protection engineering with networking and OT security, transforming these digital skills into a core internal competency for the modern utility workforce.