These courses are designed to assist the development of a ‘World Class’ industry here in New Zealand by helping to shape the hearts and minds of those in and rising to leadership roles.

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Performance Measurement and Benchmarking

Play your part in the benchmarking of the NZ construction industry and continuously improve your business at the same time!

“Always do what you’ve always done, and you’ll always have what you’ve always had!”

The problem

Stop and think for 2 minutes… What aspects of your organisation might you want to measure and improve? Why?

Clients often don’t look at what percentage of their projects are completed on time or to budget. It seems so basic but most organisations don’t do this. How can you improve your business if you don’t know how your business is performing?

How do you compare your business or projects to other businesses or projects?
How do your Health Authority projects perform against Education or Roading Authority projects?

Contractors traditionally have a bad reputation for customer service. To improve your customer service you need to know how to measure it, how to deal with it, and how to respond and improve it.

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Project Financial Analysis

Correct Project Financial Evaluation requires you to think outside the box. If you are afraid to question the norm you will never build beyond the now.

“Do you pump water over the hill, build a channel around the hill, dig a tunnel through the hill, or do nothing?”

The problem

When deciding whether to undertake a project, what factors influence your decision?

Ideally you should carry out a share analysis for the past 5 years. However, it is not practical and sometimes not even possible to do so. Luckily, as the saying goes there’s more than one way to skin a cat!

The answer is Financial Evaluation, the practical application of using the value of the asset to make or break the project.

The Academy Project Financial Evaluation sets out the framework as well as covering the fundamentals required to assess whether to take on a project.

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Risk Control and Mitigation

How risky is your company?

“The industry has for a long time been dominated by legends whose biggest claim to fame is generally putting out fires they lit themselves! Good Risk Management means you avoid lighting the fires.” – Tutor, Trevor Kempton”

The problem

Often you only start thinking about risk management after a series of disasters, never after the first – which is typically explained as just a ‘one-off’.

It can take some time to accept that the disasters might reflect an ongoing risk specific to you business.

Your first response to a series of disasters is often tactical and attempts to deal with the issues in a localised way. Almost invariably such tactics will only treat the immediate symptoms and may transfer problems to another part of the business.

Professionals wrongly identify risk and seize a solution, which after development has not only added a range of new initially unforeseen risks, but also done nothing to eliminate the original risk and added considerable cost. This is the norm for an industry that performs best by putting out the fires it’s lit itself!

The Academy Risk Control and Mitigation sets out the benefits offered by a “whole of enterprise” strategic risk management framework as well as covering the fundamentals of treating risk.

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Commercial and Contract Management

The Academy helps you manage the risks you face in choice of contract throughout the procurement process

“Half the people on the course went home with a different procurement approach for their current project than what they had envisioned”

The problem

In every construction job we struggle with the trickery surrounding the choice of contract form. Traditionally choice of contract is inconsistent and doesn’t result in a ‘best for project’ outcome – costs creep up, time extensions often occur and there is little transparency.

When you start by choosing the contract form before even considering the risks, priorities and constraints you end up with a contract not fit for purpose.

Breaking from tradition is the solution!

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Resilience

When challenged or distressed, resilient people find a way to make things work.

“A gram of prevention is worth a tonne of cure.”

The problem

Are you getting tired or not sleeping well? Are your relationships with others being affected? Are you reacting to situations rather than responding? Do you have time or resource management issues? Do your staff complain about feeling burnt out? These are all signs of low resilience… Almost everyone will struggle at times to cope with stress or adversity.

An international survey by workplace provider firm Regus found 60 per cent of New Zealand respondents were seeing more stress-related illnesses at work, such as headaches and panic attacks. A third said they were having difficulty sleeping because of work worries and a quarter were worried about losing their jobs.

When times are tough we have two choices: we can find a constructive way to deal with the situation and solve the problem or we can ignore it and hope it will go away.

Resilience refers to how we deal with adversity, set backs or disappointments.

Your personal resilience and your team members’ resilience is important in maintaining productivity, staff retention and very important in everyone’s life/work balance.

One of the latest amendments to the Health and Safety in Employment Act 1992 includes occupational stress as a workplace “harm” or “hazard”. If found to be in breach of the Act, employers may be fined up to $500,000 and/or receive up to two years’ imprisonment. It is your legal responsibility to manage your staffs’ stress levels.

The Academy Resilience course shows you how to understand what you need to build your own resilience and resilience in your staff.

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Lean Construction and Last Planner

Hands-on, engaging Lean for your company

“Lean is a methodology for process improvement, essentially it is a technique for removing waste and improving flow in processes. It can be universally applied across many industries, services and projects. Anything you do can be perfected, but the Lean tools enable you to focus on the root issues.”

The problem

Many New Zealand companies strive to understand what it is that they can and should improve. Your existing processes are often broken i.e. take too long, have too many defects, have too much variation, are too expensive or produce too much waste, etc.

Lean is becoming the process improvement toolkit of choice; capable of fixing the broken by focusing on the root causes to eliminate waste and improve flow in processes.

Lean can be used for either small incremental spot improvements or undertaken as a high-level end-to-end whole process improvement.

In the Academy’s Lean Construction course you learn to not jump to solutions but to look at the data, the issues and the root causes and to see what this tells you. Don’t go from the problem straight to the solution but to follow the logic of the road map, this will lead you to the best outcome.

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Programming

This is NOT a Microsoft Project course! (Or Primavera for that matter)

“If you want to justify your extension of time claims then you need a source of truth – a live, well-designed programme with buy-in from all stakeholders.”

The problem

Whether you are a contractor, a consultant or a client, a reputation of poor programme management is common in this industry.

This is because typical programmes are produced when the contract is signed – well before people have fully grasped the project – and then the programme is never updated. Gant charts are produced and stuck on the wall and only referred to when things goes wrong.

Is your programme ever out of date?
Does it accurately reflect your current project works?
Probably not!

When things go wrong it is instinctive to turn to the programme, but how can extension of time claims be justified or assessed when the programme is out of date?

The Academy’s Programming for Better Commercial and Risk Management course shows you how programming needs be treated as a management tool that will help you identify who needs to do what and when…

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Supply Chain Management

Bringing together ‘world class’ thinking.

“Learn from an experienced procurement practitioner and a Professor from AUT”

The problem

How effectively does your business establish and maintain supply relationships?

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Collaborative Working and Integrated Teams

New Zealand ‘Boom Bust’ Case Study

“Supporting the sharing and flow of information”

Principles of Integration and Collaborative Working,

Managing an Integrated Team,
Managing Integrated Operations,
New Zealand “Boom Bust Case” Study – and industry review.?

 

Scroll through the timeline below to see the available courses