Skills Shortage. Skills Exodus. Skills Deficit. These seem to be many of the phrases and words thrown up nowadays to create the impression that all is lost within our industry.
Or is it? Phrases like these are used to create an impression or a version of a reality.
While I do not discredit the fact that we may not have the desired volume of skills within our industry, all is far from lost. says Darrell van Rooy
We have the required skills available within our ranks and there are many methods that can be employed to elevate the existing skills level in a fast and efficient manner. We may not have the single silver bullet or a magic wand at our disposal, but what we have is enough people with a drive and a desire to impact our nation with positive change.
Before I expand on what my envisaged contribution as part of the solution is, let’s look at a few different scenarios that we find within the construction industry today.
My background
When I started my post study career in 1997 I was thrust into a key role within a large project after four months out of Technikon. Having a diploma in Civil Engineering didn’t amount to a whole lot of much when working on a mega project, or any project for that matter. I had limited experience and practical skill but was expected to produce the goods in line with somebody who had been fulfilling that role for years.
I use the analogy of a bottle of baby food and a steak.
You see, when I finished my studies my skill level, experience and ability to contribute was similar to the level of baby food. I needed to be fed and allowed to develop in experience and skills to be able to produce steak level of work. My needs and input were at baby food and it would be irrational to expect anything else than baby food as an output. The team (senior management) obviously never saw it like that and it was in the old days of sink or swim. Praise God I managed to remain afloat, and after many years started to swim.
During these formative years I picked up many skills that only later in my career began to add value within the companies where I had been employed. Looking at my skills and experience growth as a curve it was definitely slow and showed little progression at first. However once I had reached a certain point in my development, the addition of skills and experience I had gathered seemed to launch the trajectory of my ability to add value and it just seemed to increase exponentially.
This led me ask if there was a practical way to accelerate one’s ability to hit a higher trajectory in that growth curve at an earlier stage in a career especially in construction?
What if there was a way of doing this? How much more value would I have been able to add at earlier junctions in my career?
Was I the only one?
There’s nothing too unique in the little bit of my history. I am personally of the view that just about any graduate who has walked, is walking or will walk into the construction environment faces many of the same challenges in terms of current ability versus desired expectations from project managers and contract management team members.
How many promising and talented individuals made a choice to leave the construction environment and seek different pastures in another environment simply because they felt inadequate and unable to contribute and add value? And the root of this if we were to be honest would simply be due to a lack of practical experience and exposure to the relevant skills.
How many could have had a successful career within construction had they been given the skills and a knowledge base earlier within their careers? Those key skills would have allowed them to contribute and add value on their projects and make big impacts for their companies.
What if there was a practical way to elevate skills and bridge the gap between the graduate phase to being an equipped contributor to both the project and the company?
Too late to upskill?
What I had seen is that professionals tend to only utilise certain skillsets and reporting methods within their companies. It may be by adopting systems and methods that have worked for decades and that’s all their company desires to see. In this way they have limited their skillset to a certain format and many different methods exist beyond the boundaries of their ingrained paradigm.
Having worked for several major companies during my career I had no alternative but to quickly learn to adapt to differing reporting systems, reporting structures and even ways of operating. This diversity of companies worked for has given me a diverse array of skills and methods that have allowed me to add value within any organisation that required my services.
The saying goes: You’re never too old to learn. But what do you learn? Do you learn things at such a high level that it becomes almost impractical to implement? Or do you prefer to learn at a simplified level and utilize them within complex applications.
What if there was a practical course that caters for these professionals that provide a method to elevate their skills and add even more value to their employers?
Switching environments.
We know that there are many facets and environments within the Civil Engineering and Building environment beyond the construction environment. I know of many qualified and motivated individuals who made the swap from one environment to the construction environment at a stage in their career.
I know for a fact that no mater how talented these professionals were, they also would experience similar feelings of inadequacy as experienced by graduates due to them not having skills and exposure in the construction environment.
Similar to graduates, what if there was something available to bridge the gap and address the specific skills required within the construction environment?
What about SMME Contractors?
The harsh reality is there are many SMME contractors within the market who may be lacking in exposure in practical facets of project management. The application of these skills would be a contributing factor that could either make or break them as a business entity.
I am in no way discounting their drive or ability to produce the product that the client desires. I am questioning whether they can be further upskilled in their project management skills. Would the acquiring of these skills make them more successful and elevate the success rate of SMME contractors within the construction industry?
I have heard many accounts that a proportion of SMME contractors do not necessarily come from a construction environment but see it as an opportunity to make some money.
Others have started their own construction companies after being successful artisans and are hoping to be successful managing their own companies.
There have been quite a number of SMME contactors that were started by promising young Civil Engineers who may not have the full set of skills to manage the projects as a result of being held back in their careers by a perceived glass ceiling.
The array of backgrounds and histories within our SMME contractors is indeed vast and diverse. For those of us who have grown within the construction environment as an employee from an early stage in our careers, it has been a difficult and challenging enough journey. How much more difficult when you’ve entered into a new field that’s not your typical bread and butter environment? How much more when as an owner or manager of a company you manage projects but the exposure and skills are still under development while the stakes are extremely high?
What if there was a training course that could ground SMME contractors in sound project
management skills that would assist and equip them to being sustainable entities and gear them up for growth?
Can there be one solution that can cater for these scenarios and assist with such a diverse range of people and backgrounds?
Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Just another batch of wishful thinking.
But it isn’t. We’ve completed the development of and are launching a project management training course that will cater to each of the scenarios we mentioned above. And it’s achievable with the same content.
It’s a course that hasn’t been designed and developed from an academic point of view. Instead we drafted our course with practical content based on real life experience in managing projects and being part of the senior project management team. We communicate and bring to the fore sound principles for project management that will establish good practices and enhance existing ones. These are presented in a simplified way that can be applied to real projects from the very first lesson.
And the great thing is it’s available online. No need to travel from the project to attend a course at a centralized venue. No additional accommodation costs will be incurred as would be the case while attending a course at an offsite venue.
With this on demand and online availability we assist you by eliminating the need to set aside full days or a series of mornings to attend an online presentation or a course at a venue.
We’ve got the entire course on an online platform where you determine the pace and progress. We have pre-recorded the entire course and its video on demand for you. For the complete course there’s over two hundred and fifty videos to be viewed. It may sound like a lot, but the average duration is around eleven minutes per video. We’ve loaded the videos and the entire course with practical content that will add value to you, your projects and your company from day one.
We do set a limit in terms of time, based on watching two videos per day, for five days per week. Apart from that all progress is entirely up to you as you set the pace. Watch the required minimum per day or set aside a few days and binge watch all videos, the power of choice rests with you.
Not only do we present the course in video format, we also provide free downloadable content
catering for the course notes. There are also practical examples of reports and other content to augment the course notes for selected topics as part of the downloadable content.
We call it our PV24 Project Management Course. More info will be released in the coming days as we get set to launch, but here are a few highlights.
Phased Approach to Projects:
I use the following table to provide a bit of an analogy into how we as contractors should approach
our projects:
We expand on this in our overview and section introductions.
Real Projects
Something important to note is that we use two mini projects within our courses that provide practical application of the principles discussed and the skills that we aim to impart.
The table below shows how we can apply the course content to practical projects that SMME
contractors would typically be involved in when subcontracting to a main contractor. Also it provides us with real life practical examples that staff working for an established contractor can easily relate to.
For each mini project we have a Bill of Quantities and that will form the starting point for
introduction into the project and Specifications. Using the quantities within the BoQ we then focus on calculation related focus areas such as Programming, Resourcing, Estimating, Budgeting, and Progress Tracking.
Practical examples
We use many day to day practical examples to illustrate concepts and get principles across to course
participants before the applying those principles practically within the content of the modules and the
two projects. These practical examples include:
- Pizza Recipe
- Road Trip
- Gym Routine
- Online Purchases
The Wisdom Pillar:
This section is an introduction into certain facets that form the contracting environment. The focus is on providing intel or a preparation for the next phase of the project life cycle. We do no calculations in this section but lay a strong foundation that will be used extensively within the next phase or section.
The Understanding Pillar
Here we plan how we will construct our project. This is the equivalent of strategizing based on the intel we had gathered. Essentially our focus on is on Estimating, but we have broken it down into smaller modules to convey key principles that will be used throughout any project.
The Knowledge Pillar
Finally we have the Knowledge Pillar that focusses on project execution. We do not focus on coal face work, but rather project management reporting and tools to track the efficacy of a project based on the Allowable, Cost, Revenue and Profit.
Not a silver bullet, but a good arrow for the quiver
In a nutshell this is a training course that caters for both SMME Contractors as well as key personnel within established contracting firms. The principles and skills conveyed will enable team members to be more efficient and effective in certain facets of their project management skills.
As mentioned earlier we will be launching the online course within a few weeks. Our target date is the middle of March 2022. To be kept updated you can view our pre-release website at www.sualca.com and fill in our contact form. We’ll add you to our mailing list (with your permission of course) and keep you posted as we progress, launch and release new courses and content.
Alternatively you can contact us at info@sualca.com and we will endeavour to answer any specific questions raised.
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