The Client
Founded in 1984, full-service engineering firm Bury Inc. joined Stantec in March2016. Stantec has approximately 22,000 employees working in over 400 locations across six continents, all of which collaborate across disciplines and industries to bring buildings, energy and resource, environmental, and infrastructure projects to life. Stantec’s work—engineering, architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, surveying, environmental sciences, project management, and project economics, from initial project concept and planning through design, construction, and commissioning—begins at the intersection of community, creativity, and client relationships. Stantec trades on the TSX and the NYSE under the symbol STN.
The Challenge
In 2013, Bury Inc., now Stantec, launched a formal learning and development program under the banner of “Bury Academy.” Recognizing that their employees needed more than on-the-job training, they set their sights on providing continuous and high-quality professional development to their employees nationwide. “We assigned leadership to this discipline,” recalls Brad Harwick, former SVP and Director of Learning & Development, “and addressed two major needs in the early days–project management training and leadership development.”
The Solution
Bury Inc., now Stantec, assembled a team to review project management training resources and to evaluate their offerings to determine which would best suited their needs. Through research and vetting of various program offerings, the firm decided on PSMJ’s Project Management Bootcamp. “We wanted a top flight Project Management Bootcamp, and PSMJ’s program met well with our senior project managers who evaluated it,” says Harwick. Moreover, the firm was committed to in-house training rather than sending its staff to a public training program. “Due to our distributed teams, we wanted to use a singular facilitator, and have people come to our Austin location,” Harwick explains.
The Results
In total, Bury Inc., now Stantec, has trained 220 people based on the PSMJ Project Management Bootcamp platform. “It allowed us to bring everyone up to a standard of project management that had previously not existed,” Harwick says.
Moreover, every PSMJ Project Management Bootcamp class provided a post course evaluation. Attendee scores for the program and instructor were regularly 4.8 and above on a 5 point scale. “It is a solid program if taught by an experienced facilitator,” Harwick says. “Our PSMJ facilitator received high marks each and every time.”
As a result of the Project Management Bootcamps, Bury Inc., now Stantec, furthered developed best practices in project management with numerous concepts and materials presented by PSMJ, all of which enabled then to serve their clients better. “Project management is at the heart of everything our firm does for clients, “Harwick says. “Having our project managers and future project managers understand best practice in this endeavor has elevated the quality of service to our clients, as we learned in recent client feedback interviews.”
