Impactful Skills Training for Today’s Construction Project Managers and Superintendents

Developing skills needed to grow and succeed on the job

Career growth and advancement are important considerations for any job. Securing a new job or advancing to a new role in today’s competitive job market often boils down to having the right skillset.

For construction Project Managers and Superintendents, hiring managers look for candidates with leadership and project management skills to handle the expectations that come with larger projects and more responsibility.

But what if you are early in your career or in a new position and don’t have the right skills needed to advance?

A growing number of frustrated employees are taking matters into their own hands and turning to resources outside company walls. In fact, a survey by ResumeBuilder.com indicated that roughly 50% of full-time workers aged 21 to 40 say they’re getting career coaching advice from external platforms like Tik Tok.

That is a scary thought – especially for company leaders who understand the impact their reputation can have on building their businesses.

Closing the Construction Skills Gap Requires a New Kind of Learning

For many industries, and construction as a whole, there has been a significant learning and development gap overall.

According to a McKinsey & Company survey, 87% of companies worldwide acknowledge that they currently have skill gaps or anticipate them within a few years. This widespread recognition underscores the necessity for Learning and Development (L&D) departments to rethink traditional approaches to skill development, emphasizing innovative and proactive strategies to address these gaps effectively.

Given this context, what is the most effective way for construction companies to provide the right skills to support the growth of their Project Managers and Superintendents? And how can companies ensure those skills will successfully evolve every two to three years?

Mortenson has experienced consistent growth in recent years, including a record year in 2024. To ensure this positive momentum and level of service continues on every project, the company is investing in a new approach to provide access to proven leadership, technical execution and project management skills.

In order to maintain the culture that is so special and integral to Mortensen’s success, Human Resources leaders partnered with company Operations Groups to do learning at scale differently. The new initiative fostered a shift in training strategy that brings company leaders into the learning process to facilitate skill development while also providing a deeper understanding of the Mortenson culture.

“We could be our own university but the reality is the knowledge and skill is so disparate that not enough people are getting access to this massive mind,” said Tab Cronin, Director of Learning at Mortenson. “By shifting to a leader teaching team member model, everybody has access to our great legacy of knowledge and culture the Mortenson family has built over the last 70 years.”

The pilot included new two-day “immersive hybrid experiences”. Project Manager and Superintendent participants as well as SME leaders were immersed in real project scenarios and hands-on learning activities tied into collaborative deliverables that involved multiple super skills:

• Phase Planning (Building a manual phase plan)
• Fragnets (Documenting changes to the schedule)
• Owner Agreements (Identifying impact to owner agreement)
• Issue Identification & Stakeholder Communication (Role playing communication with owner)

Not only did the format align with participant preference for “doing things” instead of “listening to presentations”, but it also facilitated the opportunity to test what elements of the training were working and what needed to be cut or refined to formalize the final curriculum and approach.

“Having the SME business leaders immersed with the learners is the piece that is so unique and different” said Cronin. “They’re able to talk about the experience of applying that core content, including the really tough situations that happen during the process, so the technical learning comes to life.”

Make Learning Stick with Role Playing

It’s no secret that most people aren’t fans of role plays. Yet in reality, they create a love/hate situation because participants ultimately learn so much more by doing them. The new Skills pilot put participants into different groups to practice and role play specific scenarios, such as talking with a customer about a change or identifying levers to mitigate risk in financial management.

Business SME leaders brought the same type of pushback a customer might offer and participants got to experience those reactions in a safe place and get direct feedback in the moment. Also, participants didn't just do a role play scenario once, they actually got to go again and again until they fully understood the best approach that provided the desired experience and reinforced the Mortenson culture.

“In this learning experience, you're going to get all your scrapes and hard knocks in a safe place with real content reinforced by company experts who have lived it,” said Cronin. “Going through this process creates an impact to achieve the best builder mindset so you can actually make those strategic decisions when you go back on the project site.”