How to Preserve Knowledge
So before you continue reading this, I want to let you know that you will not find an answer in this article! I have had these thoughts in my head for well over a decade so this article is me ‘thinking’ out loud really and hopefully we can start a conversation and a brainstorm here.
When I look at my team set up, one of my most valuable players, with the most knowledge that I can’t teach over a month or two, is my site super. I can’t send a person to school to learn this skill. In school you can learn components of this job, but that wouldn’t cover even 20% of their daily job description. Their knowledge is fully experience based, so like a good scotch, you can’t push or speed up the process. And trust me when I say, I am not a patient person and I tried pushing this!?
What I have also experienced is that their role also has a serious ‘expiry’ date because your body can only take so much out on the site. If you have never walked a day in a site supers shoes, I would highly recommend you try. I have had the pleasure to learn under one amazing site super and at that time in my career I seriously considered becoming one myself. Given this past, it’s no secret that all the systems I put in place are to make the life of a site super as easy as possible so that they can focus on site management rather than everything else that they face on a badly managed project.
One of my favorite examples of a badly set up project is when I hear a consultant tell me ‘Oh the guys on site will figure that out!’. Do people know how much a day on site costs me in finance fees alone?!
The unfortunate part about construction projects is that generally they are the biggest line item on any developers budget. Another sad fact is that a lot of time on a project gets wasted at the front end, so the back end is always in crunch time. This also means that the people handling the back end, get the most amount of punches to deal with.?
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Knowing all of this, how do we make sure we preserve the 20, 30 or 40+ years of site experience and make sure they don’t say ‘fuck this, I am retiring!’??
My thought process would be to make these guys precon managers but add a training component to their job description so that they would also be in charge to train young site supers. Would this be doable? What kind of issues am I not seeing with this picture??
I’d love to hear from you!
Project Manager, Construction Consulting
1 年This is panel worthy discussion. Would love for this discussion to be furthered.
Senior Project Manager at Carrington Construction Edmonton
1 年We should catch up!
Director - Supers Recruitment Inc
1 年Very interesting and much needed conversation. The best outcome is when a Superintendent feels confident enough in their role to train an Assistant Superintendent with the goal the move on to run their own project in the near future (even if their life would be easier if the Assistant Superintendent continued to support them on future projects). Last week I did a reference on a Site Superintendent with his former Senior Superintendent and they developed a strong enough relationship that the Site Superintendent still checks in with his mentor when (and before) problems arise on-site! Another option is the General Superintendent role; but; this role is only common in large organizations. I feel like a similar role could be created for the Senior Superintendent who is approaching retirement and wants to pass along their knowledge (maybe a Roving Mentor Superintendent), but this issue is justifying the cost when the project improvements don't show up on a cost code (but show up in reduction in project cost escalations ideally). The are many Senior Superintendents that want to offload their knowledge before they retire, but I agree that the best way to do so is still a mystery.
Continuously Improving Construction Generalist
1 年When I was doing a performance review and continuous learning plan for an older experienced equipment operator he told me he was "too old to keep learning".... so I tasked him instead with teaching everything he knows to one of our young operators. If we start this sooner, formalize knowledge transfer as part of the performance process, we have a hope of keeping things moving on site.