The Value of Assessing and Upskilling Journey-Level Construction Professionals

Journey-level craft professionals are the backbone of a construction workforce. Typically considered to be tradesmen who have at least four years of experience in the industry, these workers have earned their stripes and proven themselves in the field. 

However, just because someone has reached journeyman experience thresholds doesn’t mean there isn’t room for continuing education and upskilling. Even the best professionals can have gaps in their skillset — especially with the high levels of variance in the breadth, depth and quality of construction training across the industry.  

Assessing and upskilling journey-level craft professionals allows contractors of all sizes to evaluate the true competencies of their workers, fill in gaps when necessary and ensure they are maximizing the potential of their teams to bring success to projects. 

The Challenge of Understanding Construction Skillsets 

It’s critically important for construction company leaders to know the strengths and weaknesses of their workforce. This information helps companies make appropriate schedules and assignments, plays a role in promotions and hirings and can even impact things like project bidding strategy.  

While a strong understanding helps in these areas, a lack of understanding or a misunderstanding can lead to major problems with work quality, safety performance, project timelines and cost. 

So: How do you measure and evaluate construction skills? 

An individual’s craft skillset can be hard to appraise. Unlike in other professions where performance can be more easily tied to quantifiable KPIs like sales numbers, construction requires a bit more nuance. How do you calculate the ability to properly execute hands-on tasks like using tools or handling materials? 

An additional challenge arises from the often-transient nature of the construction workforce. A company may have a stronger understanding of the skills of a long-time employee who participated in the company’s own training. However, if a more recent hire had started their career at a different company or at a program that wasn’t part of an accredited network of standardized credentialing, it can be difficult to get a grasp of their abilities before seeing them in action.  

While a resume can share some details about work experience, true performance and proficiency requires a specific type of measurement.  

Assessments: The Top Tool for Evaluating Journey-Level Skills 

To establish a measurable baseline for the skills of journey-level craft professionals, contractors can utilize assessments and performance verifications.  

Developed by the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) as valuable tools for workforce development, both assessments and performance verifications give the necessary structure to accurately and efficiently measure employees against industry standards for journey-level work.  

Assessments are proctored, closed-book tests that measure the participants’ knowledge of key concepts and best practices within a specific craft area. Meanwhile, performance verifications consist of a series of hands-on tasks, observed by a certified evaluator, that demonstrate a person’s physical ability to correctly complete key job duties.  

When utilized independently or in tandem, NCCER’s assessments and performance verifications can provide contractors a comprehensive evaluation of a construction professional’s knowledge and skills.  

Turning Assessment Results into Upskilling Plans 

Upon completion of the evaluations, contractors receive in-depth results that highlight areas where the participant excelled and areas where improvement or remediation may be needed to reach journey-level standards.  

These skills gap analyses are extremely valuable. Being able to pinpoint and directly target specific topics or skills for training, rather than putting an employee into a more generic, catch-all training program, helps make training more efficient, quick and cost-effective.  

In addition, NCCER’s full workforce development solutions can help to make providing this training even easier. The training “prescriptions” that come from assessment and performance verification results are aligned with NCCER’s training curricula, offering a turnkey method for implementing a high-quality, industry-developed upskilling program with minimal additional work needed by the contractor.  

Invest in Your Biggest Asset 

A contractor’s workforce is its biggest asset. Investing in ongoing education and upskilling for journey-level craft professionals helps to improve individual performance and ensures projects have qualified and capable people working on them. As an added bonus,  research shows investment in training helps to improve employee loyalty and retention, meaning your training can have long-term positive returns.  

To learn more about how to assess and upskill your craft professionals, click here.