NOVEMBER 2006 ISSUE
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KEYSER FILE
PCL Staff Head to Boot Camp At New Learning Centre
BY TOM KEYSER
Freelance Columnist
The PCL family of companies hauled in record revenues of $3.8 billion in 2005. At the time this article was written, it was on track to beat those numbers in 2006.
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GOOD CLEAN LEARNING |
So how does PCL reward members of the top brass? By sending them to boot camp, of course.
Oddly enough, everybody’s looking forward to it, including Paul Douglas, P.Eng. As president and COO of PCL’s Canadian buildings division, Mr. Douglas is preparing to sit in on a four-day orientation at the company’s $13-million Centennial Learning Centre, recently unveiled at corporate headquarters in Edmonton.
“Our first boot camp will be a dry run. We’ll have our major rollout next year,” explains Mr. Douglas, one of the key decision-makers for Canada’s largest construction company.
Over the next three years or so more than 2,000 employees will go through PCL’s kinder, gentler version of the U.S. Marine Corps indoctrination. They won’t be sent on 25-kilometre bivouacs with full packs. Instead, a team of professional development instructors will drill the students in fundamentals of PCL’s history, culture, corporate goals and aspirations.
Longtime managers and staffers will immerse themselves in refresher courses. Meanwhile, new recruits will be taught the PCL approach to project planning, forecasting and scheduling. They’ll take courses on how to prepare accurate estimates and cost analyses, the PCL way.
The Newbie Demographic
“The timing for this centre couldn’t have been better,” says
Mr. Douglas. “As of right now, more than 35 per cent of our employees have
less than two years of experience with PCL. And that situation will accelerate
during the next couple of years.”
Built to coincide with the company’s 100th anniversary, the on-site “campus” known as the Centennial Learning Centre stands as a testament to the vision of one of this country’s most progressive — and most successful — private companies.
More than 10 years ago, PCL’s executive team postulated that the industrial construction sector was due to run smack into an acute shortage of skilled labour, particularly in Canada’s West.
Managers set about devising plans to protect themselves. And the new learning
centre is one result.
Needless to add, the brain trust’s prediction turned out to be bang-on.
As oil sands megaprojects continue to come on stream in rapid succession, Canadian construction companies have been stretched to the limit. Insiders project more than $100 billion in industrial activity during the coming decade. And the Construction Owners Association of Alberta has estimated that jobs for as many as 100,000 skilled workers may go begging by the time current oil sands megaprojects hit their expected stride in 2015.
But the Centennial Learning Centre, several years in the planning, will help shield PCL from the adverse effects of this overwhelming trend. That’s not all, however.
Mr. Douglas is particularly proud that the PCL campus has received gold-level Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design certification, making it the first private-sector structure in Alberta to attain that status, emble- matic of the highest standards of energy efficiency and sustainability.
Taking the LEED
What earned PCL gold in the LEED program?
Innovative wrinkles have been incorporated throughout the new campus. It is 29,000 square feet of smart design and creative engineering, built from 22 per cent recycled materials.
Highlights include
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A “solar chimney,” which captures heat from the sun and diffuses it throughout the structure.
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Selective lighting — a system of interior illumination that limits power consumption via a network of dimmed hallways and other low-traffic areas.
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A geothermal heat exchange/ventilation component, which takes advantage of the Earth’s constant subterranean temperature (about 50 C). Pipes circulate air 12 feet below the Earth’s surface, where it is naturally cooled in summer and heated in winter.
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A capture system for rain and snow runoff, which is stored underground then used to irrigate the centre’s outdoor gardens.
Naturally, such environmental firewalls added plenty to the building’s
up-front capital costs.
“Well worth it,” Mr. Douglas responds. “Higher initial capital
costs are more than justified by the building’s operational efficiency.
Our models told us this made economic sense.”
It’s more than economics, however. PCL management wanted to make a statement — to send a message to 3,000 employees that this company’s commitment to environmental stewardship amounts to more than mere lip service.
For that, PCL is at the top of its class.