7:30 am Registration & Coffee

Creating Organizational Alignment

8:20 am Chair’s Opening Remarks

  • Collin Sutt Conference Chair, American Contractors Insurance Group

8:30 am Bolstering Team Health: The Ultimate Leading Indicator to Project Outcomes & Profitability

  • Todd Wynne Chief Innovation Officer, Rogers O'Brien Construction

Synopsis

  • Creating shared language and understanding of what ‘team health’ means within and across organizations
  • Understanding the link between team operational effectiveness and business profitability 
  • Experimenting with psychological techniques to measure team health, including sentiment analysis
  • Targeting collaboration and alignment to tackle challenges with mental health across the industry

 

9:10 am Building Top to Bottom Organizational Buy-In to Integrate the Pursuit of Excellence into the Fabric of Daily Operations

  • Theresa Wagner Director - Operating Group Lean Innovation, Quality , Energy Storage & Power Delivery, Mortenson

Synopsis

• Bringing clarity and alignment with the goals of senior leadership to secure executive sponsorship

• Empowering key operational leaders to enact business level change in line with these goals

• Ensuring participants in improvement initiatives connect to their role in business optimization

• Investigating ways to increase engagement by highlighting the personal value and benefits for participants 

9:50 am Morning Refreshments & Speed Networking

Foundations of Operational Excellence

Balancing Productivity & Business Improvement

10:30 am Discover: Establishing Effective Knowledge-Sharing Structures to Support Workforce Development & Higher Quality Project Delivery

Synopsis

• Evaluating models to incentivize and enable knowledge sharing among various operational groups

• Selecting group representatives to get a collective voice on best practices across business functions, and how they can be embedded into the day to day

• Maximizing the use of construction management software and practices to facilitate knowledge sharing

11:30 am Develop: Staffing & Resourcing Continuous Improvement Initiatives in a Project-Driven Organization

Synopsis

• Discussing the benefits of establishing dedicated improvement teams and how this can scale to your business need

• Ensuring involvement of end-users without impacting day-today productivity

• Developing systems to monitor the potential negative impact of process change on business productivity and intervening when that goes wrong

12:00 pm Action: Reflecting on Your Firm’s Organizational Structure: How Are You Resourcing & Monitoring Improvement Initiatives?

Enablers of Operational Excellence

Managing Process Change

10:30 am Discover: Developing a Framework to Investigate, Test, Design & Re-Design a Strategy to Deploy Business Change

Synopsis

• Determining a staged approach for piloting a process change

• Leveraging project and region-specific insights to ensure a fit for purpose company-wide implementation strategy

• Highlighting best practices for developing training materials and frameworks to reinforce change

11:30 am Develop: Creating a Manageable & Scalable System to Identify Areas Requiring Improvement

Synopsis

• Fostering a culture that empowers staff to get involved with Operational Excellence and suggest improvement initiatives

• Establishing an effective system for uncovering areas in need of improvement

• Implementing clear criteria around initiative selection to ensure democracy and clarity across the organization

12:00 pm Action: Sharing Lessons Learned from Managing Your Own Process Change: How Can You Blueprint Your Framework to Inform Future Success?

12:20 pm Lunch Break

Developing Talent

1:20 pm Discover: Optimizing Your Recruitment Process to Secure Top Talent

Synopsis

• Collaborating with HR to enhance recruitment policies and job advertisements to make your business more appealing to candidates

• Finding experienced candidates for advanced roles within the organization

• Assessing interview techniques that effectively evaluate cultural fit and leadership capabilities

1:50 pm Develop: Evaluating Emerging Workforce Preferences to Inform the Way You Hire & Resource Projects

Synopsis

• Confronting the issue of rising labor costs and how you can mitigate overall inflation with effective L&D systems

• Exploring ways to incentivize geographic motility in an age of different expectations of work/life balance

• Building a pipeline of entry-level talent to maintain long-term business prosperity  

2:20 pm Action: Sharing Ideas on Enhancing Employee Experience to Improve Staff Retention. What Are Staff Looking For?

Technological Enablement

1:20 pm Discover: Selecting Technology to Integrate With & Enhance Your Current Tech Stack & Workflows

  • David Pounds Senior Vice President of Enterprise Solutions, Flintco, LLC

Synopsis

• Understanding and maximizing the value of tools already in your tech stack to determine if a new tool is really necessary

• Determining when your company has reached the inflection point that justifies investment into a new tool

• Cutting through the noise to identify tools that will provide tangible organizational impact 

1:50 pm Develop: Exploring the Emerging Technologies with the Biggest Impact on Field Productivity

Synopsis

• Developing robust selection criteria for technology to improve field productivity

• Scrutinizing the effectiveness of emerging tools claiming to enhance field productivity, site logistics and lean delivery

• Making informed decisions on which technologies are worth investing time and resources in 

2:20 pm Action:Comparing & Contrasting Tools in Your Tech-Stack to Uncover Opportunities For Enhancement

Fostering a Culture of Change From Top-to-Bottom

2:40 pm Afternoon Refreshments

3:10 pm Effectively Setting the Direction for & Managing Change at All Levels to Embed Improved Tools & Processes

Synopsis

• Assessing the appropriate level of detail in new processes to ensure they are practical for staff to follow, without overcomplicating and overwhelming them

• Gaining insight into different personality types within the organization to effectively manage and sustain engagement during change initiatives

• Determining the extent to which pockets of resistance should be addressed to minimize impact on those who are willing to engage in improvement initiatives

• Creating feedback loops to assess the success of process changes and determine when they’re fully optimized

3:50 pm Creating a Culture of Leadership & Progression in the Field to Guarantee the Prosperity of Your Firm

  • Stephen Hunt Manager, Training and Development, Gray Construction

Synopsis

• Engaging superintendents with their role in people development and retention into senior field management roles

• Developing leadership skills in middle management to drive organization-wide transformation through a “train-the-trainer” approach

• Implementing clear developmental career pathways so that people can aspire to progress

4:30 pm Chair’s Closing Remarks

  • Collin Sutt Conference Chair, American Contractors Insurance Group

4:40 pm End of Day One