BH/BA Training Is Making Better Project Managers In-House

BH/BA Training Is Making Better
Project Managers In-House

Project Management Class

By A. Stevens Krug, A.I.A, and P.E.
Vice President, Facilities Division

It makes clients happy, saves money and improves contract compliance and profitability -- so we do it every spring and fall. Twelve years after it started, Buchart-Horn, Inc./BASCO Associates' in-house training is still turning out better project managers.

More like college than corporate home schooling, the BH/BA project manager course consists of 16 hours of classroom instruction over one weekend, independent study assignments, paper presentations and graded exams.

The course grew from the company's desire to help every project manager function as well as those who manage masterfully. After all, with today's ever-present threat of litigation and intense competition in the marketplace, project management is not an area to learn from your mistakes.

Commercially-available training programs offered general information not always useful to our company's style of business or to our client's needs. Senior level, in-house staff put together the firm's training program taught by our own people in the "Board Room" of our corporate headquarters within a former brownfield site in York, Pennsylvania.

Students are nominated to attend the course and their inclusion must be approved by the President.

Candidates for the project manager course must have a BS, BA or BT from an accredited four-year institution. They must be registered as an architect, engineer, landscape architect, surveyor, planner, scientist or licensed Class A or B plant operator.

The firm also requires at least two years experience as a project architect, engineer, landscape architect, surveyor, planner, scientist or Deputy Project Manager with Buchart-Horn, Inc./ BASCO Associates or a minimum of four years experience with another firm. Industrial and military experience are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Students have to demonstrate an understanding of the impact of computer graphics on the design process, coordination requirements, drawing planning, cost consequences and search techniques for reusable details/reference files. They also have to show a detailed knowledge of the financial impacts of computer usage.

To date, over 100 people have been certified as BH/BA project managers. Some staff members have been permitted to take the course even though they were not registered in their professions. Thus there are additional BH/BA people who will receive the firm's project manager certification upon receipt of their appropriate registration.

This special in-house training provides us with a reliable pool of well-prepared project managers. Within BH/BA, project manager is an assigned responsibility, not a job description -- so the firm has great flexibility to control costs.

Best of all, the special training effort turns out the best kind of project manager, the kind that manages projects to please clients.