One of the great challenges these days is training. Contractors have no other option. They no longer can hire somebody from another state and expect them to be productive in their company immediately. What they have to do is to take people that are really raw talent and move them and mold them into something better. And the only way to do that is through training. Training is the key to construction firms in the future. In fact, I will tell you this. The contractors I really respect can take that raw talent, will teach it and make it even better. The boys that they have taken from a very basic stage in their construction career and made them vice presidents of operation and project managers and superintendents. You look at training as the only key of moving your people up to a better place.

What are some of the things to think about when you’re formulating your training strategy? Well one of them is that it takes five years for people to change in your training. That is, it takes a very long time for people to become better in their work and move up in the organization. And it’s important to know is that the secret here is patience. You certainly can’t be impatient, you certainly can’t send somebody off to a boot camp for one week and expect them to be a better employee next week. It just doesn’t work that way.

In this patient approach, it is important maybe to quantify. Let’s think about it this way. Most firms in general industry will tell you that they spend 2 percent of their payroll on training. And that’s a very good number, a workable number, it seems to make sense with a lot of industries. But in construction, our net profit is 3 percent so we could really use that amount of money, you know that expense profitably and make that equation work for us? Probably not. Certainly, that’s a lot of money to ask ourselves to spend on training. So think about this, isn’t time the same as money? How many hours in a week, 40? What’s 2 percent of 40 hours? What it comes down to is, if your managers or supervisors are working with your people 10 minutes a day, that comes out to about 2-percent net investment in training of your people. Now that makes a lot more sense to me. In fact, I think that’s the key for companies as they look forward to the future and try to admit to the challenges of having better, more qualified, more craft-savvy people.