Our Management Training Classes

By introducing our Management Training classes to your staff we help ease the negative effect of change on both managerial and supervisory personnel. The change in job responsibilities, the change in personnel, job duties, and the rising challenge of developing subordinates are specific goals of our learning systems classes. We are highly successful at helping Managers and Supervisors learn and adapt to the necessary skills and proper behaviors to be successful at work as well as in their personal lives.

For more information on our management training classes please contact us.

As a part of our management training classes, Managers and Supervisors will learn how to:

• Minimize the chance of miscommunication by understanding what people are really saying, and why
• Deal with difficult people, manage tense situations, and resolve conflict
• Make use of proven active listening skills to improve your ability to gain helpful information
• Be able to facilitate, guide, and close discussions in one-on-one or group settings
• Improve understanding and communication by giving and receiving good feedback
• Use ideas submitted by a member of the team without causing other members to be defensive
• Develop a comprehensive team building strategy that improves productivity of the whole team
• Emphasize the value of working toward common goals without devaluing individual accomplishment
• Define and set up a method to track staff activities
• Be able to manage time and work assignments effectively
• Conduct team meetings that capture and hold the audience’s attention
• Interview and hire the right person for the right job
• Save time and work more effectively through the use of a clear time management plan
• Understand and comply with proper hiring and managing requirements
• Communicate effectively with both superiors, peers and subordinates
• Become effective coaches for their work team
• Conduct accurate and difficult performance appraisals

 

Management Training:
Getting Started with a Project Management Training Class

Project management training that is clear and useful can be hard to come by. Project management is a skill that most anyone can learn if they understand the basics. I think many resources for project management training tend to make this discipline too complicated. To me, there are three simple areas to manage for your project: budgeting, scheduling, and construction. Here I will discuss the basic elements of these three to get you started with your project management training.

Budgeting

Your first step in project management training is to learn good budgeting skills. This assumes that your project scope and design has already been completed. You need to know exactly what you are building or making in order to budget correctly. There are three main categories for you budget: materials, labor, and equipment.

Your designer should have a complete material take-off sheet that lists all parts, equipment, and raw materials needed to build the thing. Excel is the ideal tool for making your budget. Make four columns in your Excel file: material, quantity, unit cost, and total cost. Simply write down the information specific to all the items listed on the material list and parts take-off sheets. For parts you will have to use vendor catalogs or call them to get good price estimates to use in your budget.

After materials you will have to identify all the labor required to complete your project. This will require that you have an idea of the number of man-hours are needed to complete each task. You may have to call contractors to get estimates on the cost per hour for different types of labor. Also needed is the equipment used during construction, and you will have to get an hourly rate for that also. List all of the different types of labor and equipment needed on your spreadsheet, and the associated cost per hour.

Then you will get a total for all of this. Many estimators like to have a contingency added to the subtotal. This can be any percentage you like, if you are not sure use 10%. This means you will add an extra 10% to your overall budget to account for risks and unknowns that may occur.

Scheduling

Once your budget is approved you will need to make a project management schedule. This will include all the jobs that are required to complete your management project. For example, if we are pouring a concrete wall we would have to know the times needed for site prep, setting forms, lying rebar, pouring concrete, and cleanup. You can make a simple Gantt Chart in Excel and make a line for each task, and the number of hours or days required for each. If you want fancy detail then MS Project is an excellent tool to use for making a project schedule.

The most important part of the management schedule is to find the "critical path". These are the tasks that must be completed before the project can move forward. Taking our concrete example, the critical path would be earthwork, forms, pouring concrete, and cleanup. Notice that I did not list laying rebar, because the rebar work can be done the same time as the forms so it will not be on the critical path. If you define the critical path then you know exactly how long your management project will take.

Construction

Now you are ready to begin construction. All of your hard word of budgeting and scheduling will show here. During this phase you will monitor how the work is getting done, making sure it is completed according to design, within budget and on time. This requires that you have a good working relationship with the contractor, and you are able to work side by side with him in a positive manner. It is important that you selected a reputable and honest contractor so your money won't be wasted on poor quality work.

There are times when you want to change a part of your project while it is being construction. This will require you to make a "change order" with the contractor, and ask him to give you a bid for the extra work. Also, with these changes a new set of drawings will need to be made (if drawing are required at all), and these are called "as built". Finally, when the construction is completed you will have to perform a final walk through of the contractor's work. Here you make sure nothing was missed, that all aspects of the design were completed properly, and the cleanup was done adequately.

Elijah Rampart: link

Subject: Management Training Class

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