NEWS  

October, 2006

Construction Firm Gets Back £10 for Every £1 Spent on Training
AND Wins National Training Award

Jane and Neil with GMTV presenter, Andrew Castle
Jane and Neil with GMTV presenter, Andrew Castle

Does training increase profits and improve quality? For Bovey Construction of Ashburton, the answer is yes. By training its site managers in management as well as craft skills, it has not only won the highest level award in the National Training Awards, but generated an additional £10 in profits for every £1 spent on training.

The company met or exceeded its people-development and business targets at the end of its award-winning two-year training programme. Now with highly developed management skills, the five site managers lead their teams, handle the architect and deal with clients in a way that is unheard of in the construction industry, which lags behind other sectors in leadership and management. All this is achieved without the intervention of their managing director, Neil Turner, who now can focus on company-wide matters.

Successes include:

  • profitability up from 2.8% to 7.94%;
  • gross margins now at 25%, up from 22%;
  • overheads down from 18.2% to 17%;
  • staff turnover down from 67% to 25%
  • absenteeism down from 2.9 to 2.1
  • snagging lists downs to 5-10 compared with a national figure of 40-60;
  • a 90% success rate in meeting deadlines;
  • MD site visits down from 3-5 a week to one;
  • winning a quality award, the Built in Quality Award in 2004.

The core of the training and development was the coaching and mentoring provided by Neil Turner, who himself completed an NVQ Level 5 during the period of training he devised for his site managers. The training programme included an NVQ Level 3 in site management, a CITB course for construction site managers and an in-house training programme designed by a consultant. The latter focused on specific skills identified by the site managers and their teams, including site briefing, performance reviews and wide-ranging written and spoken communication skills.

Bovey Construction was one of two organisations in the South West to win National Training Awards. At the ceremony at the Thistle Hotel, Bristol on 26 October, it learnt that it had beaten big-name competitors including the Wrigley Company, AXA Life, Somerfield Stores, Norwich Union and Beachcroft LLP, the high-profile law firm.

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