It’s not enough anymore to just check the boxes. You need to have employees who know what they are doing and be able to demonstrate that to your customers.
Structural Technologies It’s not enough anymore to just check the boxes. You need to have employees who know what they are doing and be able to demonstrate that to your customers.

There’s a new wave crashing into the construction industry and it is called workforce development. Although most contractors invest in their people through training, if the major construction owners have their way—and they are the ones with the money—a well-documented and aggressive workforce-development program will soon become mandatory, at least on major projects. The Construction Users Roundtable (CURT) is a gathering of major private construction consumers—companies such as utilities, manufacturers, and oil producers. Combined, CURT members represent nearly $200 billion in annual construction purchasing power and the organization describes itself as a “driving force for continuous and significant improvement throughout the construction industry.”

How much influence CURT has on non-members, smaller owners, public entities, and subcontractors is debatable, but this sort of thing is bound to trickle down. Another impetus will come from a recently released McKinsey & Company report encouraging government consumers of construction services to push contractors to adopt more digital approaches to construction, including training. “As with most industries, the construction sector will struggle to find the talent needed to use new technologies effectively,” the report asserts. “Governments can play a dual role in helping to meet this challenge. First, they can invest in training programs that not only build needed capabilities but also provide new opportunities to workers displaced by these technologies.”

During a panel session at the February 2019 CURT National Conference, prominent CURT members laid out their strategy on workforce development. “Owners have to be the solution,” said Jim Ellis, Global General Manger of Engineering and Project Management for Sabic and current CURT president. “The crisis is now. Our C-Suite leaders must champion workforce development as a corporate value; they must be the drivers. At one point several years ago, owners decided that safety must be the top priority on jobsites and worked together to unleash innovation and it worked. We need to bring that same approach to workforce development and insist that all of our contractors are investing one percent of the project labor budget in training and workforce development.”

To make this happen, CURT has developed, through its Labor Risk Management (LRM) Program, a way to pre-qualify and select contractors partly based on their commitment to workforce development. “Owners need to lead and expect contractors to become engaged in workforce development,” said another panel participant, Eddie Clayton, the contracting and workforce strategy manager for the Southern Co., a major electric utility in the southeast U.S., and chair of CURT’s Workforce Development Committee. CURT’s engagement criteria (the Contractors’ Workforce Development Assessment) will require contractors to show that they have addressed the following:

  • Forecast their labor demand and supply (using the Construction Labor Market Analyzer)
  • Assessed the available third-party workforce development tools
  • Are striving to increase workforce diversity
  • Are engaging non-journeymen in training
  • Are assessing the company’s current and needed skills
  • Are directly involved in training program development

Construction Industry Institute (CII) data has shown that each $1 invested in training has a return on investment of $3, including more than a 25 percent improvement in safety. “We simply need to make workforce development a condition of employment,” said panelist Ed Luckenbach, field execution manager for Air Products & Chemicals, Inc. “That will catch the attention of contractors.”

Today, 25 percent of Structural’s project management, estimating, business development, and operational leadership are graduates of its Project Engineering Career Development program. They hope to increase that to 50 percent over the next five years.
Structural Technologies Today, 25 percent of Structural’s project management, estimating, business development, and operational leadership are graduates of its Project Engineering Career Development program. They hope to increase that to 50 percent over the next five years.

Investing in Workforce Development
Structural Technologies is ahead of the curve on this, having been investing in workforce development for many years, but now the company is significantly increasing that investment. “Structural Technologies has about 3,000 employees and in 2018 we delivered 30,000 training sessions,” says Brandon Emmons, who is in charge of learning and organizational development at Structural. “That was a big jump from only 6,000 sessions the prior year.” But even though Structural is a big company, the approaches it uses can be applied to all companies, large or small.

“We start by making sure the training is efficient and effective,” says Emmons. “There’s an increasing demand from customers. It’s not enough anymore to just check the boxes. You need to have employees who know what they are doing and be able to demonstrate that to your customers.”

Structural bases its online training on a learning software platform called Moodle. Emmons explains, “Moodle was developed 20 years ago in a university setting. It’s free, open-source software, and there are plenty of services that will help you set up a training program for only a few hundred dollars. It’s accessible easily for even small companies.”

Emmons notes that Structural self-performs on a wide scope of work and that the concrete repair projects that are a big portion of their market have gotten more technical over the years. That has led them to develop their own internal development and training programs. “We need training that shows our customers that we are credible and what we are capable of delivering. We’ll grab training programs off the shelf if they fit, but in general it seems to be better for our employees if we develop the content internally.”

Structural has made significant investments in organizational development and has a systematic vetting process for making these investments and measuring the value the company gets in return.
Structural Technologies Structural has made significant investments in organizational development and has a systematic vetting process for making these investments and measuring the value the company gets in return.

Structural recognizes that there are two distinct types of training needed for skilled workers: knowledge (what they know) and skills (what they can do). They deliver the knowledge component with online training but that’s not effective for skill-building. “We use our field managers and construction managers to deliver the skills training,” says Emmons. “We provide the materials from headquarters, and they set time aside to work with the employee. We might, for example, say there are ten things this person needs to know how to do. They will go through each of these sequentially and test as they go along, asking questions to make sure he or she understands the task and can do it properly. It’s proven to be a very effective and efficient model: ‘formative assessment’ as opposed to ‘summative.’”

Emmons notes that many contractors may not be aware of what’s available or how to go about setting up a training program. “You need to define your goals and the purpose of the training and then measure your achievements. We use the Kirkpatrick model for evaluation. This way we can evaluate what moves the needle on training.”

The Kirkpatrick method of analyzing and evaluating the results of training and educational programs, according to the Educational Technology web site, “takes into account any style of training, both informal or formal, to determine aptitude based on four levels. Level 1, Reaction, measures how participants react to the training (e.g., satisfaction). Level 2, Learning, analyzes if they truly understood the training (e.g., increase in knowledge, skills, or experience). Level 3, Behavior, looks at if they are utilizing what they learned at work (e.g., change in behavior). Level 4, Results, determines if the material had a positive impact on the business / organization.”

Structural has made significant investments in organizational development and has a systematic vetting process for making these investments and measuring the value the company gets in return. “The first step is to define the need, what business problem are we trying to solve (that’s equivalent to Kirkpatrick Level 4). Then, step two is to determine if it is a problem training can solve. Typically management issues and training issues can be conflated. If yes, then what is the potential business gain? What is the cost of building and implementing the training? Is there a valuable ROI? In short, define the goal, define a meaningful measure of if the goal has been achieved, design the learning experience, measure, refine.“We begin with the end in mind and use best practices to deliver and test. In the end, the goal is to provide our employees an enjoyable and enriching experience and to provide the company with competent employees.”

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