Improving Frontline Supervision in Industrial Construction

Co-sponsored by CURT

Frontline supervisors – Foremen and General Foremen – are responsible for translating construction plans into productive practice. Despite the importance of these roles, RT-330’s experience and research findings indicate weaknesses in frontline supervision and associated opportunities for improvement.

Several hundred surveys and interviews conducted by RT-330 validated the hypotheses that, in general, the Foremen and General Foremen working on today’s industrial construction sites lack the competencies needed to adequately lead and manage their workforce.

The principal conclusions of the research include the following:

1. Ten core competencies are uniformly seen as important to Foreman and General Foreman performance. These fundamental competencies are the same across all project types (i.e., traditional, maintenance, and Advanced Work Packaging).
2. Survey and interview data support the hypothesis that both Foremen and General Foremen competency levels in the industry are below desirable levels. This is particularly true for Foremen. Investment to improve these competencies may be one of the biggest opportunities the industry has to improve construction productivity and performance.
3. On projects of all types, survey results show that Foremen and General Foremen spend a considerable amount of time away from what the RT-330 research designated as ideal or target time budgeted for their primary tasks. While some variation is to be expected, better allocation of frontline supervisor time could yield significant productivity improvements.
4. There is evidence that Advanced Work Packaging (AWP) improves frontline supervision time on task compared to traditional projects. Time differences are significant in aggregate. Interview results demonstrate that AWP project frontline supervisors provide more uniformly focused answers about their tasks than do traditional project frontline supervisors.
5. AWP training is generally seen as beneficial to Foremen and General Foremen on both traditional and AWP projects.

RT-330’s overarching recommendation is that the capital projects industry must collectively invest in training and educating frontline supervisors. This especially holds true for Foremen. The transient nature of the position, moving from project to project, makes it difficult for individual firms and projects to justify investing in a Foreman’s professional development. The needed training and education should focus on the 10 competencies outlined in the RT-330 findings, and the research team finds that this recommendation applies equally to both union and open-shop construction. A supporting recommendation is that AWP training, as part of the proposed broader education efforts, can prove beneficial to Foremen and General Foremen, whether they work within AWP or traditional execution environments.