DESIGN OF AN EFFECTIVE TRAINING PROGRAMME FOR PRODUCT QUALITY ASSURANCE IN CONSTRUCTION COMPANIES

A lot of emphasis is given on training of employees by the construction companies who are concerned about the quality of construction. Because the organisations understand the dire effects of a poor quality work on their business. A handsome budget is also allocated for Trainings. Some organisations have designed pretty good training programmes also. The management appreciates those programmes and the participants also like them.

But the results?

Generally there are mixed opinion about the results or effectiveness of the training in terms of improvement in quality of work, ranging from ‘totally failed’ to ‘highly successful’.

What is not understood while judging the effectiveness of these programme is that:

a) the above evaluation is based on gut feeling and not on any scientific method of measurement,

b) there is no scientific method of measuring the effect of training programmes available with the organisations and

c) since evaluation method is not available therefore objectives of training also remains not well defined and measurable.

As we know, unless the objectives are measurable they just remain wishes. To make them measurable we need to have defined units of measurement and standard tools to measure.

An important requirement for assurance of quality is to “follow the rule”. This may be used as a guiding principle or mantra to design the whole training system broadly by

- making the rule,

- communicating the rule and

- check how much has been followed

This takes us to the requirement of a 3 phases in training process and a create a sync among three phases i.e. pre-training, the training and post training.

Pre-Training

This phase is about understanding and defining the ‘rules’. The obvious step towards this in construction industry is making SOP or Work Procedures. The senior technical brains of the organisation must get involved in this exercise.

The DO’s and DONT’s of this process shall be as under:

- The activities which are thought to be critical to quality must be identified. The criticality should be based upon the impact of the activity on product quality and not upon its financial impact.

- The emphasis should be on product quality and not on total quality during this exercise

- All the collective experience of the participants should come on the table. It includes, poor quality instances, there own perception about the root causes, customers’ perception, other stake holders’ perception.

- The customers’ and stake holders’ perception should be real not perceived and if possible extracted from available records.

-The outcome, i.e. the Work Procedure, should be standard w.r.t. the prevailing specifications and standard best practices. The so called ‘practical’ considerations which compromise with the standard practice shall get no place in Work Procedures directly or indirectly.

- It is a must that the work procedures address all the mistakes in past and leave no room for them to get repeated. A separate clause of ‘precautions’ or Do’s & Dont’s can be added to ensure this.

The draft of Work Procedure shall be the outcome of this exercise. This draft becomes the basis for all the future activities of this exercise of design of training programme, until a part of Work Procedure needs revision for the purpose of syncing it with other two phases. Any changes in technical aspects of this draft shall be done in consultation with the same panel which has prepared this draft.

An important point at this stage is the understanding of the evaluation process now itself so that the drafting of the Work Procedure document is done in such a manner which supports the evaluation process. For example identifying the most critical and lesser critical steps if the evaluation is weightage based.

For the purpose of this article the Evaluation process has been covered in phase 3 but finalisation of check lists and weightage shall be done at this stage only so that it can be made part of the second phase i.e., The Training.

The Training

The next important step in this design procedure is to set the syllabus of training and to identify the trainer.

It is very clear that the finalised Work Procedure has got to be the syllabus for The Training. The Work Procedure has to be shown as such to the trainees and a copy is to be given to them as training material. Added to this the trainees must be made aware of-

- Technical reasons behind every step of the procedure

- Consequences of not following the steps of the procedure

- Compulsion of using this procedure as a rule to work in the organisation - The evaluation process

The trainer should be chosen very carefully and preferably one of those who were involved in making the procedure. An ideal trainer in construction is a man of field with academic bent of mind. The whole procedure of design of this training must be clear in his mind.

For each work procedure the training time can be one to one and half day (subject to the length of the procedure). A shorter time will not cover all the aspects and longer time will start adding weeds.

A test before and after training is always a good idea to measure the ‘learning’ by the trainers. It also helps in keeping the trainees alert during programme and also helps in identifying the need of repeating the programme for some trainees. A free and frank question-answer session should also be encouraged to take feedback on the work procedure over and above solving doubts.

It is recommended that along with the execution team the planning team and the project manager should be trained about the work procedure in the same class.

Evaluation

Last but not the least the Evaluation.

The objective of Evaluation process shall be to answer following two questions-

- How much the trainees have learned?

- How much the trainees have implemented?

For learning, the test given at the end of training session shall suffice. But the implementation shall be assessed based upon change in rating of the work in field they are supposed to carry out.

For this a scientifically designed rating method is required to be used. A method which ensures fair comparison of different activities even if performed at different times and by different individuals.

The salient features of the Evaluation method are:

- The rating shall include evaluation of both process and product.

- A weightage shall be allocated to every activity

- The cumulative rating shall be calculated using statistical techniques.

- To make this rating free from natural human bias of the evaluator a standard checklist shall be prepared against each work procedure which shall report the status of compliance in ‘yes’ or ‘no’ format.

- In case there is some measurement involved the tolerance limits according to Work Procedure must be shown in the checklist and actual measured value shall be recorded by the evaluator.

- Some minimum score (I recommend 90%) shall be fixed as ‘passing marks’.

- In case of failure the candidate shall go through a brush up session where his non compliance must be informed to him and discussed with him.

- A candidate shall be declared pass on the basis of several evaluations done over a definite period of time (I recommend 6 evaluations in 3 months). This will ensure ‘Right First Time Every Time’ philosophy of quality assurance.

The Evaluation process can be supported with awards at various levels like top score after The Training, every time one scores 90% in Evaluation, to the trainer for performance of his class in implementation etc.

The above process trains and evaluates the individuals involved in construction. But this process itself needs evaluation. For that purpose the client and other stake holders’ feedback shall be taken at regular interval and the process shall be corroborated with that.

A systematic and scientific approach to any problems certainly yields results and I am sure the above process of design of a training process, if adopted by an organisations in true spirit, is certainly going to pay in terms of improvement of the product quality in construction industry.

Your comments and suggestions are welcome.