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Classroom Training & The Construction Industry

As part of our consulting business we provide a lot of training classes because it is something the industry desperately needs.

There is some structured training during an apprenticeship but many people want to bypass even that level of classroom learning. Want to become a foreman, superintendent or PM? There is very little training and people are just thrown into it.

When we do provide training we often end up with low attendance levels and even end up cancelling classes sometimes. Why? People simply do not believe that they need to be proactive in learning - they believe that everything can be learned "Hands-On, On-The-Job" which is only partially true.

Georgian Lussier, an Industry Educator makes some great points in a recent article from Contractor Magazine called "We Don't Need No Stinkin' Books!"

The other thing I find amazing is the difference between contractors in how they view education. Some companies send their whole crew and others want to save a few pennies by only sending one person. What is the ROI on training? It's hard to pin a specific number but here's one example of training ROI that I just saw last week with one of our clients:

We did some Project Management training for one of our retainer clients who was on the Construction Company Development (CCD) program. Part of the training was on Change Order Negotiation. One of the PM's just told me that he was able to build a case for lost productivity into a change order and would have never even thought to do that before the training. Even if they settle for 50 cents on the dollar this one little tip will pay for this year's retainer fees plus some!

Posted by David on January 5, 2007 07:28 AM|Permalink

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