I work for a contract company which supplies workers for industrial maintenance and repairs. Almost every task within our organization is project-based.
For large contracts requiring hundreds of workers, a certified Project Manager (PM) is recruited. The PM oversees regular meetings, monitoring/control of costs and time, Gantt Charts, critical path mapping, and wraps up with a key-stakeholder debriefing and brainstorming session for future improvements. Smaller jobs are planned, organized and managed by the core-few of owner-bosses and regular employees.
Unit 3 – Activity 1 asks us to reflect on the implementation of a new project within our organization:
What was the problem/issue to be solved? There are many challenges with training and completing hire-on packages/contracts for the hundreds of workers we need to hire for a large project. Most of the trades-workers are not local. Paying workers to travel to attend safety training well-ahead of time is challenging to schedule and very costly, and waiting until the day before a job begins is risky – we could get caught with our pants down if workers fail their safety training quizzes or don’t show up and we cannot find last-minute replacements. In addition, because we require all the sign-on documents and training to be completed before anyone is legally allowed to begin work, it is an administrative nightmare to process all the legislatively-required paperwork for hundreds of people in a single day before the job starts. The solution presented was to provide safety training online several weeks ahead of time.
Were the overall goals communicated? Yes, in a broad, not detailed, way.
Who benefited? Our organization benefited – most specifically administration.
Who were the stakeholders? The organization, the customer, and the workers/learners.
Was there a project plan put in place? There was an overall project plan with a project manager for the entire massive industrial maintenance project, but not a specific or detailed plan which focused on the digital learning aspect.
What did the plan look like? “We need online training ASAP.”
What changes in planning do you think would have helped with any of the barriers or challenges that were encountered? I think the creation of the online safety program could have started earlier so it wouldn’t have been such a mad rush to implement it and troubleshoot. I think we should have had more consideration for the experience of the end user – the workers. With more time, we might have researched online training-delivery methods and found a more user-friendly platform for technology-challenged workers.
Do you think any specific method for planning was used? No, unless you count “ready, set, go!” as a planning method. We still unofficially managed costs and time and met the generalized criteria for successful completion, i.e. the goal to simply put the training online. This was feasible because our problem was a relatively tame/simple problem (Conway, Masters, & Thorold, 2017).
What methods do you see yourself using in your practice? Instead of jumping straight to the execution phase, I would like to explore a more in-depth planning phase for future endeavors. I also think the “sequential sprints” described in scrum methodology (Watt, 2014, p. 36) could fit well within our organization’s culture. Conway et al.’s “think like a system, act like an entrepreneur” (2017, p. 3) method has reconfigured some of my thoughts on approach as well.
References
Conway, R., Masters, J., & Thorold, J., (2017). From design thinking to systems change: How to invest in innovation for social impact. Royal Society of Arts, Action and Research Centre.
Watt, A. (2014). Project Management. Victoria, BC: BCcampus.
Hi Angie, thanks for the unique perspective this brings to our cohort. I think you might be the only one in an industrial sort of e-learning type setting, I find it interesting. How effective do you think your workers found the training, do you think the safety assessents/training met the same degree of understanding to previous more traditional assessment methods, and has there been any fallout as far as gaps in learning are concerned that may potentially impact safety?
Hi Marshall, thank you for your questions. My impression (based on quiz grades) is that the short-term absorption of the safety information for workers has been similar between the online and the classroom learning.
Whenever there is a safety incident, rigorous investigations are conducted and the causes are addressed then added to the itinerary of safety meetings and future training as appropriate. Incidents can be caused by infinite, often unforeseen circumstances. If the primary cause of an incident is ever related to a lack of training, then that gets fixed very very quickly. I cannot think of any safety incidents that were ever blamed on workers not learning effectively because they learned online instead of in a classroom.
The biggest challenge in implementing the change to online learning was with technology problems and technology acceptance by the workers. They did fine as far as actual grades go, there were just large numbers who complained about not liking computers and/or not being good with computers.