Good Essay On Dpr Construction

DPR Construction, established in 1990 is a commercial contractor and construction management company concentrating on technically challenging and environmentally complex projects. This focus of this essay is to describe how integrity and ethics play a role in their training programs and attempts to explore the various facets of their training functions.

Company Overview

The company envisions becoming a truly great construction company and their mission is to be one of the most admired companies by the year 2030 . The company aims to achieve their vision and mission by focusing on the four fundamental core values- Integrity, Enjoyment, Uniqueness and Ever Forward. The company follows its role models and industry stalwarts like Hewlett Packard, Toyota, Disney Microsoft, Red Cross etc. for building their people practices, quality and innovation, building the brand image, becoming aggressive and bullet smart and maintaining integrity and indispensability. The core markets of DPR Construction are Advanced Technology, Corporate Office, Healthcare, Higher Education and Life Sciences. The company has delivered over 8500 projects since its inception in 1990 in the various expertise areas which include collaborative virtual building and BIM, sustainable construction, pre-construction, special services group, self-perform work and safety works contracting.
DPR Construction is a company which imparts great importance to integrity, which is the cornerstone of the DPR culture. The company has published the DPR code, which clearly outlines the necessity of up keeping honesty and fairness in their operations, creation of a safe work environment, importance of maintaining integrity and honesty in treating each other, their contractors and business partners. DPR considers itself as a learning organization and spends great effort in learning and development practices which include providing training to its employees to get accustomed to the company culture and adhere closely to the operational guidelines of the company. The following section will focus on the training programs adopted at DPR Construction and analyze how integrity and ethics play a role in their training programs.

Training Programs

DPR Construction believes in providing the best training opportunities for its employees to nurture an environment that fosters professional growth. DPR provides external training programs as well as internal training tools and programs consisting of national and regional courses. The emphasis is on topics such as green constructions, electrical systems, self-perform work, negotiating skills, time management and business development. Further to this are the regional courses like safety, BIM and software programs which customizes the requirements .
The training programs at DPR are crafted with the intention of achieving the employees to get focused on their four fundamental core values- Integrity, Enjoyment, Uniqueness and Ever Forward. The new employees of the company has to go through the mandatory three day training session, termed as the Current Best Practices (CBP), which focusses on DPR culture, operations, business, technology and interpersonal skills . They also focus on the industry requirements and adequate training on the newer skills is provided to the employees.
DPR stresses much on hiring and retaining the talent and developing a pipeline of future leaders by equipping them with the knowhow of the latest technologies. Constantly updating themselves helps the company to achieve a competitive advantage over its competition. The company is not just leaving the learning requirement to the employees, but is taking the pains to set up the training facility to train its employees based on the requirements from the industry. There are many examples which can be cited here to support this like the training initiative launched to support BIM, one of the construction industries’ most important developments which includes just in time training, classroom sessions and e-learning segment to share the best practices . Yet another example is the training initiative supporting sustainability, which focusses on environment friendly building methodologies.
One of the key innovations of the DPR’s Global Learning Group is to conduct annual training summit, which are the brainstorming sessions aiming to develop learning programs in conjunction with meeting the specific business objectives. BIM, risk management, operations and systems are some of the topics identified for the training program development.
As mentioned earlier in this essay, DPR also focusses and invests in developing future leaders. The learning group has implemented a leadership training and development process, the elements of which include self-awareness work, external executive coaching, and closes the program by conducting a two and a half day retreat for the participants .
DPR being a company focusing on integrity are conducting the training programs with much stress on ethics and honesty. Scientific evaluation methodologies are implemented for each of these training processes and RoI for these programs are calculated. The training programs are in tune with the DPR code document and all the employees, post the training are supposed to get aligned with the below mentioned code of conduct -

“Conduct all business with the highest standards of honesty and fairness”

“Follow the letter and spirit of the law and uphold all contractual agreements”
“Maintain a culture where doing the right thing is not only professed, but prized and practiced by all employees”
“Avoid conflicts of interests and circumstances that may lead to even the appearance of a conflict”
“Create a safe workplace and uphold a commitment to environmental responsibility”
“Exercise commonsense and good judgment”
The commitment of DPR Construction on imparting quality training, in tune with the industry requirements differentiates it from the competition and this has enabled them to earn the enviable position of one of the top 100 companies to work for in the Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” list. DPR Construction is also placed at the 10th position on Training Magazine’s top 125 organizations evaluated based on the closeness of the company’s development efforts to its business goals.
DPR Construction, though a pioneer not just in their operations, but also on the employee focus and training, can still improve on their training functions. This article recommends the implementation of a learning management system, which will help the company to further streamline its training operations and reduce the reliance on the instructor based training. Automation is the mantra of the day and companies across the industries are adopting this to sharpen their training programs.

Conclusion

This article has analyzed in detail on the training programs implemented at DPR Construction and how integrity plays a role in framing these programs. The article has also analyzed on how the training is providing a competitive advantage, support the organizational strategies and has made a recommendation to further improve their training initiatives.

Works Cited

DPR Construction. (2009, October). Life on the Cutting Edge of Learning. Retrieved from dpr.com: http://www.dpr.com/assets/news-docs/2009-10-01%20traininganddevelopment.pdf
DPR Construction. (2015). Core Ideology. Retrieved from dpr.com: http://www.dpr.com/company/ideology
DPR Construction. (2015). DPR Code. Retrieved from dpr.com: http://www.dpr.com/assets/docs/dpr-code.pdf
DPR Construction. (2015). Learning and Development. Retrieved from dpr.com: http://www.dpr.com/company/careers/working-at-dpr/learning-and-development