Motivation Technique for a Site Manager - Essay Example

Motivation Technique for Site Manager The is currently working as a site manager on a construction site. It is not a regular construction job, it is rather a competition where ten construction companies have to demonstrate its abilities, efficiencies, promptness and quality of the job, while performing the pavement of a road. Each construction company is to pave one kilometre of a route, in the least amount of time and limited amount of resources, and the winner will sign a contract to complete the pavement of the whole road, which distance amounts to about 300 kilometres. It is important to mention that the construction job takes place in a third world country, some of the other competing companies are local and the rest are foreign as us. The sponsors of the project issued warnings regarding the typical constraints presented in an underdeveloped country. The Site manager is required to explain the situation to his workers and to motivate them in order to win the competition, they need to keep in mind that there is time constraint and might be supplies and materials constraints, in general situations which they have not been exposed to. There are several techniques used to motivate the employees, the site manager will attempt to emphasize on the techniques presented by Businessballs website and by Inc.com 5000 website. The construction job is to be divided in several different phases. Some of them can be performed at the same time, and some of them should be performed one after the other. The first phase is the mobilise the personnel into the job site, that is to set up offices and a warehouse to keep all the construction equipment and different supplies. The offices could be empty containers which are easily transported and suited of different purposes. The personnel required for this phase is the site manager, head engineer and 6 construction workers. The next phase is to hire a topographer team in order to verify the configuration of the road. In highly developed countries this phase has already been fulfilled. However, the project comes from a third world country where budgeting is limited and the work of a topographer is not final until the construction duty begins, since the previous jobs are not as detailed as they should be. Therefore, this phase is very important for the competition, where the topographic team verifies the initial design and the missing information is filled in for the construction process to begin. This phase could start as soon as the mobilising process begins. The next phase would be the soil removal phase, where the terrain is prepared for the construction, the soil is moved, or removed if necessary and based upon the results from the topographic team, some places the soil would be filled in. For this phase heavy equipments are required as back hoe and dump trucks, in order to remove the soil and then move the material to other required places or to dispose of them. The next phase is to prepare the sub base or initial layer, where several layers of granular materials is placed where the soil has been removed. For this project it is required by the technical specifications to place to layers of 30 centimetres each. After each layer of granular material is placed, the granular materials should be compacted until the surface is homogenous. The next phase refers to the base layer, which refers to the act of placing granular material again. This time only one layer is required and should be done upon a homogenous surface shaping the road already. The layer width depends upon each project, but in this case it should be about 20 centimetres. As soon as the granular material is set into place, a strict quality control should be performed in order to prevent unevenness on the road. At all times the topographic team should verify the goals set at each phase. The next phase refers to the act of watering the road using a cistern. The water is imparted until the humidity level on the material reaches an optimum level where the material presents its maximum density. Once that step is achieved, again the road is compacted until the surface is even and flat. As a continuation, and as it has been done previously with water, diluted asphalt should be poured evenly upon de road. This is done in order to create a bonding compound between the material layer and the asphalt layer. The final phase is to pour the asphalt compound into the even surface, this is done by using an asphalt plant which heats up the mixture of granular material, fine sands, filler asphalt cement and distributes evenly upon the surface of the road. Once the mixture is distributed, it is compacted intensively until five centimetres of width is achieved. Again the topographic team should be present at every phase in every stage in order to meet the standards required by the technical specifications. As you already know this is a different kind of project; the type of training required for this job is different from what we have been used to so far, and needless to say it is very important. Therefore, it is necessary to lay out the basic training requirements needed for this project. Let us get started with the office set up, as well as the other facilities. According to the job specifications, the actual construction site will take place in very desolate places from where we do not know with certainty if we will be able to count with electrical energy, potable water and other set of resources, throughout the duration of the project. For the kilometre of testing, the sponsor entity has managed to facilitate us a source of electrical energy and a source of water, not knowing if it would be potable water or not. The crew in charge of setting up the office should take that into account and provide us with necessary portable sanitary conditions. Also this crew should be able to provide us with a set of office equipment capable of resisting constant increase of electrical power. Additionally, as a preventive measure, and in case we obtain the project, the crew in charge should provide us with a temporary alternate source of electrical energy. This crew also should take care of a suitable warehouse in order to store the heavy equipment and other set of supplies. The weather at the job site varies from dry and cold to humid and warm, the warehouse should be constructed in order to resist the sudden temperature changes and capable to be moved constantly, as the project progresses and/or requires. Also this crew should be able to run an analysis and provide us with a set of construction workers and machine operators, capable of communicating with us, not excessively expensive and skilful enough to solve any difficult situation we might encounter. The heavy equipment to be used during the testing kilometre will be local. As you may imagine, we do not have reliable information upon the efficiency of the equipment and its true life, therefore it is more than necessary to take along a mechanical expert, or experts if necessary. The function of these experts will be, initially to evaluate the equipment before acquiring it, and then to provide a good maintenance throughout the testing period, and to provide a crash course of training to the heavy equipment operators. In case we are awarded with the project, the contract provides for an item, where we can transport our own equipment required for the entire project. On the other hand, the construction workers could be local, that could lower our costs, but the language barrier and the lack of proper training based upon our standards and requirements. Since time is one of our constraints, for the testing kilometre, the company will take our most skilled construction workers. Based upon the preliminary information received by the local government and the sponsor entity, the preliminary topographic information is not very accurate, and the preliminary road design was made based upon aero photometry. Therefore, the topographic team that our company is required to take into this project is required to have an extensive experience in all sorts of soils and territories, that is international experience, capable of dealing with all sorts of situations, such as weather and social. As for the materials for the paving phase, the local government will provide the asphalt and the rest of the additives. As of today, the specifications of those materials will not be provided until the day the testing period begins. Therefore, we need to take into account and be prepare in case the material is very low quality and might affect the overall project. The testing period has been completed and on behalf of our company I would like to thank the whole group for your effort and inputs throughout this job. As all of you already know, the primary aim of our company is to provide the best service available in any situation and any location, always having as our priority the welfare and goodness of our employees. The company is also aware that throughout the testing period, you as employees have faced several obstacles in order to provide your best performance. We are aware of the fact that being away from home does not provide us with a comfortable environment to perform our best; Also the food and constant climate changing has left us in an uncertain situation of what to expect on daily basis. Having said that, allow me to thank you once more for being able to gather your strength, energy and will power and be able to finish the testing project within the established time and complying with all the requirements, even those that arouse at the last minute. Being able to perceive the fruitful results, and on behalf of the company, during the next few days, the management team will give away several awards to the employees that have exceeded our expectations throughout this testing period, and to those employees whose valuable work has helped the rest of the team, in completing the work. It has been mentioned, prior to the job's initiation and throughout the duration of the project, many of the situations were uncertain and many difficulties were formed as the project progressed. The company would like to thank those employees that presented solutions and presented initiatives to make our job more efficient. Even more, knowing that the conditions for this competition were not fair for all of the international companies present in the competition, your motivation was not diminished. The management team would like to make clear that in case our company wins this project, the decision of hiring local construction workers has not been made. In case we take that road, for those of you that performed very well during this testing period, your spot is secured, and the rest of you will be given another chance to prove your skills and willingness to perform at a level required by this project. For the next few minutes, the management team would like to hear about your personal career goals and what your expectancies from the company. This exercise will help the management into fulfilling one of our company's goals. That is, to provide welfare and treat well to our employees. The management team believes that your goals and expectancies flow in the same path as our company's. Additionally, we will make our best to improve in those aspects that you as employees feel that this company presents some weaknesses. Having said that, this management team would like to thank you, once again for your effort and performance provided throughout the entire project. Although, we believe that the competition was unfair to all the foreign companies, we believe our results will provide us with a very high end score. Our prognostic is that a local company will be awarded the project; however, since none of these companies have the required human resources and equipment resources to complete the job, eventually the project will land onto our laps. It is a bureaucratic process that needs to be followed and the sponsoring entity will respect it until the awarded company cannot fulfil the expectations. On that line of thinking, please be prepared to work on this project, be prepared to cope with more difficult situations than those encountered during the testing period and be prepared for the upcoming challenges. Once more, thank you for your performance, dedication, loyalty and willingness to continue working. The previous paragraphs have shown the motivation of a group of workers in a foreign country, facing different difficult situations and working towards the completion of a job, even though, there were early indicators of not being a fair competition and the winner already designated as a local company. The motivation is not lost because there were not signs of poor performance, but acts of corruption. The project was indeed awarded to a local company; however, the sponsoring entity provided for three months as a trial period and pressured the local government to break contract with the company based upon incompletion of the project, up to the three-month limit period and as provided by the contract. As a result, the project was awarded to the runner up company, which was our construction company. We had foreseen the situation and throughout the trial period of three months, we had been preparing emotionally and physically our personnel in order to regain the lost time and to complete the project within the time limit agreed in the contract. Since the local government is subject to the sponsoring entity, the basis and financial conditions of the original contract have been modified in our favour. Those benefits will be partially redistributed among our employees based upon their performance throughout the project, having partial evaluations at the end of each phase. However, the most important gain from this project, is the opportunity to create an international expansion and broaden our horizons. From the experience learned throughout this paper, the author believes that in order to have a successful construction company, it is necessary to maintain the human resources at a very satisfying level. Full contentment does not only contemplate a financial reward, it also contemplates a verbal eulogize and respect towards the employee's ideas and inputs. One of the goals that this construction company has, is to take a step forward into international grounds. This company needs to share and implement this goal into the line of thinking of its employees, also the thrill and challenge of being in foreign grounds and succeeding, should be shared amongst all the employees, especially those facing more difficult tasks than others. It is very important to identify some common obstacles and then to acknowledge them publicly. The latter does not imply allowing delays because of those obstacles, but to inform the employees that the management team is aware of the situations and will support them if necessary. As part of the motivation techniques, the writer believes that the manager and/or the management team should talk on personal basis with each employee under his/her wing, without getting too personal, and trying to learn names and careers. Therefore, allowing the caring feeling surface upon their lives and jobs. Based upon the information provided by the web page "Businessballs", in order to create an employee motivation system, a survey should be created and periodically distributed among the employees. This should generate real facts and not the usual assumptions. Businessballs. 2004. Businessballs: Employee Motivation. [Online]. Available: http://www.businessballs.com/employeemotivation.htm. [May 11, 2008]. Inc.com. 2008. Inc.com: Motivating Employees. [Online]. Available: http://www.inc.com/guides/hr/20776.html. [May 11, 2008]. Read More