Amy Powell

my Background and why training?

My background is mainly commercial project management, which later in my career, I started wearing another hat of 'trainer' where I built and conducted the companies PM, PE and Superintendent training's. Along with this I wore a few other hats including, outreach, recruiting and software evaluation and integration (for both field and office). While I very much enjoyed the experiences within these roles, I also found myself frustrated at the lack of efficiency in the processes. I built training programs, they were accurate and helpful, but I continually found that they were not as efficient as I needed or wanted them to be! While the information was concise, correct and presented in an appealing way, for some employees, the information was just not sticking! They were still getting it wrong! And continuing to send them through the programs and expecting different results is Einstein's definition of insanity, so that option was out. I tried tweaking the information and adding some activities to make these more engaging, but it still wasn't as effective as I wanted or needed it to be. With resource constraints (time and money), I found myself frustrated because I felt I could only ever provide 'good enough' training! Why wasn't it sticking? Why wasn't it being applied? This was not proving to be efficient! 

I deduced that I either needed more time or more knowledge to become more efficient and effective. Considering the other hats I wore at the time, I could only dedicate around 10-12 hours a week to training. So, the option of more resources (time or money) was out. This is when I decided to tackle this on my own and enrolled in a Master’s program focusing on Adult Education and Training. Throughout the program, my focus remained on the construction industry. My projects, my research, my application and approaches were all related to challenges and topics experienced and observed within the industry.  I also developed a strong interest in emotional intelligence, cognitive processes and social psychology which happen to have strong ties and applicability to what we do and how we do it in construction.  It was the combination of all of these that helped with my realization of why our trainings are so dang inefficient in construction, but also the realization of the barriers that prevent us from making our training more efficient and effective. After completing my Master’s program, in recognizing our industries larger need for this information, I decided to commit to training full time and focus all of my energy towards helping the industry in this capacity. This is the point when Well Works officially began.