Cement industry training – part one

Introduction

The continued anticipated growth of the world cement market this year, as with 2015, will place more demands on cement companies and the people who work for them. Training will be crucial factors in helping workers deliver high-quality products and services to customers.

New technologies and innovations in this industry are being introduced every day. And the global growth in infrastructure projects around the world is putting even more pressure on companies and workers to stay on top of fast-evolving standards and training tools. Simply put, workers must keep pace.

Leaders of cement and concrete companies have been asking questions, such as:

• What is the most important training for my employees?
• Who in my organisation is or should be responsible for training?
• Do my managers have time to oversee training?
• Can I afford to lose employee time for training?
• Do I have the budget for training?

There have been many reasons that these questions are coming up more frequently in recent years. For example, many companies now depend on fewer employees to do the same amount of work. Also, new machinery and equipment are driving the need to attract and retain more high-skilled workers.

Most importantly, employers want to have teams that are more efficient, more effective and more productive, as well as motivated and satisfied with their jobs.

The standards-training connection

In the construction sector, standards help determine everything from the strength of steel to the water content of cement. Contracts and other construction documents increasingly require or specify standards to ensure that materials perform as they should.

As high-quality standards are used more and more throughout the world in industries like cement, the standards-training connection becomes crucial for businesses that want to compete.

Standards are therefore an integral pillar of any effective training program. When a cement company says that their products adhere to and employees follow high-quality, market-relevant, globally accepted technical standards, it sends a strong message to customers.

Standards (specifications, test methods, guides and practices) provide a strong foundation of employee knowledge.

New standards are becoming crucial in growing fields such as sustainable concrete, building enclosure commissioning and environmental aspects of property evaluations. And, of course, all standards are living documents that are revised frequently, so training helps keep companies well-versed in their application.

Consensus-based standards have broad support from manufacturers, suppliers, researchers, government representatives and academics who understand why and how each standard was created. It is these same technical experts who often help to develop and review content for the training courses that show how these standards are implemented by industry.

This is part one of a two-part article written for World Cement’s March issue and abridged for the website. Subscribers can read the full issue by signing in, and can also catch up on-the-go via our new app for Apple and Android. Non-subscribers can access a preview of the December 2015 issue here.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldcement.com/special-reports/02032016/cement-industry-training-part-one-604/