We go to school to learn and train for our futures, but it’s surprising how many of us end up spending the days of our adult lives doing tasks and holding responsibilities in areas for which we never trained. Owners of contracting companies end up in those spots from a variety of positions. Some work their way up from the trades. Others earn construction management degrees. Still others get their education at the kitchen table, learning the business from their parents.
But this is a complicated business, and none of those training programs properly prepares a person to manage a contracting company. More often than not, the program is fat on technical issues but lean on business management. So, what’s a person to do to learn more and improve his business?
For metal building assemblers, there is a new answer from the Metal Building Contractors & Erectors Association: the AC478 accreditation program. This program is accredited by the International Accreditation Service (IAS), and will give assemblers the same kind of ability to offer quality assurance that metal building manufacturers have through their own accreditation program: AC472.
What does earning an accreditation have to do with training? In itself, nothing. If a perfect metal building assembler, who was excellent in managing all the safety, construction and other processes required to consistently assemble quality metal buildings, he would only need to turn over his processes, endure the inspection and take the accreditation in hand. But who among us is perfect?
In truth, for most of us managing businesses, our downfall is often not that we do something poorly but that we don’t know what we don’t know. We just can’t see the problem because we’ve never had that training. And in the construction arena, where every job site is a unique manufacturing plant and employees are a struggle to find and train and accounting principles are an awkward balance between tax reporting and financial management, that kind of training requirement is broad and and multivariate and absolutely necessary.
All that leads to a very simple conclusion. Grab every bit of training you can get. Because school is never out, and you don’t know what you don’t know.
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Webinar Prove Your Excellence: Earn the Metal Builder Assembler AC478 Accreditation Join us for a one-hour webinar that will explain how you can differentiate your company from your quality competition by earning the new AC478 accreditation. Established by the Metal Builder Contractors & Erectors Association (MBCEA) and administered by the International Accreditation Service (IAS), the AC478 accreditation will help metal building assemblers improve their business and ensure the highest quality product, service and safety environment in the industry. Our panel of four experts will explain how to earn AC478 accreditation and offer you real-life experiences from two erectors who have completed the program. For more information, go to www.metalconstructionnews.com/events.aspx |
