N E W S I N D U S T RY
Workforce innovations Contractors are creating new solutions for an old and worsening problem. BY SAM BARNES
DRASTIC ACTION: MMR Vice President Jeramiah Blum, talking with students in the company’s Craft Training Center, realized the need for MMR University after the company lost the bulk of its estimating department.
when he along with estimating manager Matt Jean began brainstorming for a new approach. Ultimately, they decided that the internship program would have to become its own stand-alone entity if they had any hope of meeting future demand. With that in mind, the contractor created MMR University, an internal learning and development program tailored to augment higher education and professional skill sets over a 2½-year period. Complemented by new classroom facilities at MMR’s Baton Rouge headquarters, MMR-U combines in-person instruction with hands-on lessons, virtual learning opportunities, two summers of field experience and personal mentorship from MMR professionals. After nearly a year of planning and preparation, MMR launched the pilot program this spring. INTERNAL APPROACH MMR took its inspiration from a handful of large international contractors with similar programs, even touring megacontractor Kiewit Corp.’s training facility in Omaha, Nebraska. “It opened our eyes,” Blum says. “These guys are bringing in 800 interns a summer, and they hired
DON KADAIR
JERAMIAH BLUM KNEW something had to be done. In 2021, MMR Group’s vice president of estimating lost the bulk of his estimating department in one fell swoop when 27 people transferred to the construction field. Blum’s department had traditionally served as a training ground for new estimators and future managers, many of them interns pursuing construction management degrees at LSU or Southeastern Louisiana University. On average, he had been releasing anywhere from six to eight estimators to the field per year, but a pandemic-induced backlog of work had increased the demand to unprecedented levels. The resulting void in his department forced Blum to tell the MMR construction team that he could provide only one or two new estimators in the coming year. That’s
2,500 new employees last year alone. We sat down with them to find out what works, what doesn’t work, etc.” In February 2022, MMR enlisted the help of Phillip LaFargue and Sarah Broome of LaFargue LLC to design the educational pathway for MMR-U. It was the organizational consultants’ first time building a training program for a for-profit company, but they approached it much like any other learning program, Broome says. “It was a matter of breaking down the skills and knowledge that needed to be taught, then figuring out how to sequence and teach them in a way that students would both learn and retain the information.” It took about eight months to develop the program, during which time they met with current and former employees and various department heads to determine the scope of the curriculum and the best way to structure the teaching process. The resulting curriculum is organized into three components—an online learning component that provides students with basic knowledge, terms and definitions; a classroom component where students work one-on-one or in a group with an instructor; and a hands-on component where students apply what they’ve learned in the field. “The first cohort of 14 students began MMR-U this spring,” Blum says. “This fall, we’ll bring in another 14 students to bring the total to 28. Then, we hope to ramp it up to 42 interns by fall 2024, all students combined.” Currently, MMR-U interns are stationed at jobsites across the country as part of their summer field placement. For example, Hayley Macaluso, a construction management senior at LSU, is stationed at the Rio Tinto Kennecott Copper Mine in South Jordan, Utah, where MMR performs service and maintenance. At the same time, she’s taking two online physics classes with the intent of graduating in fall 2024. Macaluso, who first heard about MMR-U through LSU’s Construction Student Association, has been pleased with the program so far. “It’s very intentional,” she says. “Many internships just throw you
Daily-Report.com | BUSINESS REPORT, July 2023
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