A Lower Hutt based civil infrastructure company has scooped a national award for the third year in a row in recognition of its staff development.
Construction Contracts Ltd (CCL) was awarded a Connexis Company Training and Development Award in recognition of the outstanding development of its staff at the recent Civil Contractors New Zealand (CCNZ) National Awards. Connexis is the Industry Training Organisation (ITO) for the infrastructure industry. CCL Director & General Manager David Howard says that CCL is thrilled to have won. “The achievement of winning the award for the third year in a row reinforces how proud we are to focus on developing our team into a technically skilled workforce. We want our people to be better than when they arrived at CCL. Training and upskilling our team allows them to personally develop and gives us the confidence that they can work unsupervised while doing their jobs safely and accurately.
“The benefit of this is that we get the work done in a timely manner and we get it right the first time, providing the highest quality service to our clients. Ultimately through the skills and knowledge obtained through training, the company, and our team members can be proud that their work is a job well done.”
CCL won the ‘Up to $10 million’ category (based on annual turnover) with Christchurch’s Texco taking the ‘$10 -$25 million’ award and Higgins, which has operations in New Zealand and Fiji, the ‘Over $25 million’. Higgins Group Support Manager John Bryant said the company has had a strong focus on improving its training in recent years and this award recognises this commitment to both the amount and quality of our training in the business.
“There is still room for improvement, however we’ve established a great platform to build upon in the future. Higgins is now better able to offer formal recognition for the skills obtained on the job and this helps with retention and attracting new people to our business. It’s also rewarding to see our staff grow and step up to bigger challenges.
“Training is good for business. Effectively trained staff are more productive, work safer and are engaged. As a business and in the industry, we have a significant amount of work ahead of us and we need to find better ways to ensure that new staff are up to the skill levels we require.”
Connexis ITO Chief Executive Helmut Modlik says that it’s important to recognise companies that have strong commitment to training, as it is a key factor in attracting and retaining good talent for the industry.
“In 2015 there were 47,500 people employed in the civil sector with a job growth rate of 6.2 percent between 2014 and 2015, while the total economy growth was 2.4 percent over that same period. The industry is continuing to grow and it is estimated that they will need approximately 19,600 new people by 2020 to meet workforce requirements.”
