Are your managers up for it?

You are the MD or construction director. Your technical skills are not in doubt. You’ve spent your whole working life in the industry, and you know good building when you see it. But when was the last time you or your managers did any management development? OK, you’ve done the health and safety courses to understand the legislation, but what about managing people or negotiating with suppliers?

The need for management development is not always immediately obvious. I was recently asked by the construction director of a major housebuilder to provide training in good brickwork and blockwork for his site managers because the general standard was not very good.

Before setting up the training we did some research. What we found was that all the company’s site managers knew that the brickwork was not very good. What they didn’t know was how to go about improving quality without upsetting the bricklayers - “And we can’t do that because bricklayers are hard to find at the moment.” It wasn’t technical training that the site managers needed, it was training in people management skills so they could manage their subcontractors better and persuade them to deliver better quality.

If we’re going to meet the rising expectations of customers we have to address the way we develop our construction management staff. Get it right and you will get fewer defects and safer sites, and the business success will follow.

the brickwork wasn’t very good but they didn’t know how to improve it without upsetting the bricklayers

Proving cause and effect is not always straightforward, but the evidence is always there. The NHBC surveys employers of successful candidates on its NVQ Level 4 in building site management six months after completing the programme. It is not at all unusual to find them reporting there is less wastage of materials, better programming of works, better site staff performance and reduced remedial costs. Not surprisingly, there are also significant savings in money and management time.

But no amount of training can deliver bottom-line benefits unless the culture of your organisation supports the management development process. I’ve heard senior people in the industry raise serious objections to investing in management development. “As soon as they’re qualified they’ll leave/be poached/ask for more money,” is how the argument usually runs. My answer is always the same: there are practical ways to prevent those things happening, but, frankly, if an organisation’s culture is right then that alone makes staff more likely to stay.

The real risk lies in not investing in your own skills or those of your managers. In an industry plagued by razor-thin margins we simply can’t afford to ignore ways of managing our businesses better. With the skills shortages at trade level forcing the industry into off-site fabrication, the role and competence of managers becomes even more important as they have to manage innovative construction methods.