AECOM partners with Mentoring 4 Success to develop young built environment professionals
 | AECOM partners with Mentoring 4 Success to develop young built environment professionals_approved | 43.5 KB | Download |
 Preview | An important part of the AECOM culture is to grow and develop its potential future employee pool. | 503.54 KB | Download |
 Preview | Knowledge Mentor™ is the perfect solution to leverage technology to overcome the shortcomings of this traditional approach. | 583.63 KB | Download |
 Preview | The app has already received interest from multiple professional institutions and learned societies locally and internationally | 794.81 KB | Download |
 Preview | The knowledge themes contained in the app are client specific. | 510.83 KB | Download |
 Preview | The MentorExcellerator™ app has subsequently been introduced as a follow-on from Knowledge Mentor™. | 1011.65 KB | Download |
 Preview | The whole point is to get that global conversation going, because then you have real-life experience. | 508.38 KB | Download |
 Preview | AECOM HR Business Partner Jill Singh. | 1.95 MB | Download |
These are Knowledge Mentor™ and Mentor Excellerator™, with the latter introduced at the end of July. M4S has an exclusive relationship with the Knowledge Mentoring Institute (KMI), which develops knowledge-sharing and professional career acceleration apps and supporting technologies, Business Director Shelley Marsh explains.
It has also partnered with the South African Board of People Practice (SABPP), the local regulatory professional body for human resources (HR) professional and practitioners. AECOM is the first company of its kind locally to afford their built environment professionals an additional professional HR designation in terms of their valued mentoring role.
“From an AECOM perspective, we are constantly looking to improve the way we do things, and we do acknowledge that our young talent needs mentorship,” HR Business Partner Jill Singh comments. “Many companies believe in external training that is aligned with all the different policies and government procedures, but we have realised that mentorship is key, which is why we have partnered with M4S since 2009.”
While M4S is often approached by companies wishing to establish a mentorship programme, the first and foremost step is to understand what the main goal is. This can vary from leadership development to nurturing young talent and graduate development, or even as a Category C candidacy development programme driving professional registration. M4S, for example, is accredited in this regard, and has a proper measurement tool to evaluate it, referred to as Return on Mentoring Investment (ROMI).
The traditional approach to mentoring is to invite participants to a master class, but the tight deadlines and margin pressure in the engineering and construction sectors in particular means that mentors and candidates are often unable to attend. Not only does this mean they have to catch up later on any important information they may have missed out on, the opportunity for interaction with one’s peers has also gone to waste.
Knowledge Mentor™ is the perfect solution to leverage technology to overcome the shortcomings of this traditional approach. This bespoke knowledge and context-sharing mobile app has a solid framework built on best knowledge management and mentoring practices on a modern mobile technology stack. The knowledge themes contained in the app are client specific – which, in the case of AECOM, are linked to its common critical conversations across various disciplines.
“It is not only about sharing knowledge, but also selecting who, and how, you want to interact with each other. If you are on-site in Ghana, for example, and have a project-specific question, this can be addressed to your mentor, group, division, or discipline, making the app applicable across teams, countries, and regions,” Marsh elaborates. “The value of mentorship does not lie in simply pairing people off and then leaving them to their own devices. Most companies adopt a tick-box approach in this regard, which has zero impact on the organisation.”
“Not only does the app allow AECOM executive management to keep tabs on our up-and-coming employees, it also allows leaders to diversify and distribute their own knowledge, experiences and relationships further within the company, thus optimising their critical leadership impact. The app now affords our senior personnel and professionals with a very real opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the development of our next generation of confident and competent young built environment professionals,” Singh stresses.
“We stress that AECOM is a global company, and this app is testament to how we can leverage that. Our knowledge base is very fluid. Not only can our managers see who the keenest and most responsive students are, but we can also identify what talent needs to be groomed. Mentors can also contribute by giving a global perspective,” Singh explains. This is what Marsh terms ‘fluid intelligence’.
An added benefit of the app is that it has assisted in facilitating the merger of AECOM’s Africa and Middle East regions, with young graduates who are professionally recognised being seconded to other areas such as Dubai to gain international work experience. Candidates in 2016 and 2017 who have since become registered professionals and now work internationally in AECOM’s global offices continue to collaborate on the app with their old candidacy colleagues, and provide a useful continuity on long-running projects, where knowledge and memory of initial design or site matters is of critical importance.
An important part of the AECOM culture is to grow and develop its potential future employee pool. Recently it was the first industry mentors to have been included on the mobile app-enabled StudyTrust Student Mentoring and Support Program, in collaboration with M4S and StudyTrust – which celebrate 45 years of involvement in the education sector in South Africa.
“Using our uniquely configured KnowledgeMentor™ mobile app, all our young candidate professionals and mentors, as well as other management volunteers within AECOM, can now participate securely in a truly massive nation-building project, the StudyTrust Student Mentoring and Support Project,” Singh adds.
“The whole point is to get that global conversation going, because then you have real-life experience. It is all not about theory and books. It is about connecting the people who have gained the necessary on-the-ground experience with those who will need it. In addition, mentorship can have a massive bottom-line impact. For example, what is the cost of all the repetitive, predictable and possibly preventable errors made in your organisation?
The latest international engineering and construction research suggests that this can range from 0.5% to 5% of project value. One example is that a 1% reduction in unnecessary construction costs caused through a lack of knowledge and the associated preventable wastage could save society £100 billion.
“Our apps now facilitate immediate, context-rich collaborations and responses between our professionals and peers when if, for example, someone has picked up something critical on-site that is a potentially costly error. That is what we want to drive, the fact that it is not just mentorship for mentorship’s sake, but can be measured practically,” Marsh elaborates.
The MentorExcellerator™ app has subsequently been introduced as a follow-on from Knowledge Mentor™, designed specifically to drive and monitor young candidates, increasing focus on professional development and their journey to registration in all their day-to-day activities.
“Knowledge and experience are very seldom gained in the classroom. This app allows our young candidates to journalise their learning within their respective professional frameworks in the very moment of learning, as well as notify their mentors at the same time. It caters for all our built environment professionals, and will provide AECOM with the critical evidence and impact that we want to track in order to identify our future leaders and professionals at an early stage.
“The app has already received interest from multiple professional institutions and learned societies locally and internationally, and it will give us invaluable insights into the professional development journeys of all our young candidates in future,” Singh concludes.
Ends
Notes to the editor
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About AECOM
AECOM is built to deliver a better world. We design, build, finance and operate critical infrastructure assets for governments, businesses and organisations. As a fully integrated firm, we connect knowledge and experience across our global network of experts to help clients solve their most complex challenges. From high-performance buildings and infrastructure, to resilient communities and environments, to stable and secure nations, our work is transformative, differentiated and vital. A Fortune 500 firm, AECOM had revenue of approximately $20.2 billion during fiscal year 2018. See how we deliver what others can only imagine at www.aecom.com and @AECOM.
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