Developing Managers for the Construction Industry

Abstract

With the exception of a few big firms, and some energetic efforts from the professional institutions, managers aren’t ‘developed’ at all for the construction industry. Craftsmen and professional specialists are developed, but managers just happen. They develop themselves as they struggle along: hardly ever taking time to reflect on what they have learned, and how they have learned it, because they never seem to have the time available. Like all deeply traditional industries, the construction industry makes or breaks its managers by hurling them in at the deep end, rather than intelligently and purposefully ‘developing’ them. Most of the people who have reached the top have either started there as the sons of their fathers, or have got there the hard way.