In the early 2000’s, PSE made the decision to outsource all pre-construction engineering positions. One negative, unintended result is that the organization lost a lot of control over the quality of the work and customer satisfaction. In 2015, PSE established the Customer & Systems Projects (C&SP) department to bring the pre-construction engineering function back in-house. Bringing in this specialized workforce and getting them up to speed in PSE’s culture and business practices created a significant training need, particularly to keep pace with the Seattle region’s massive construction boom—PSE’s service area is one of the fastest growing populations in the nation. In 2017, PSE began the development of a centralized training program that would increase the speed to competency for new C&SP engineers and the project managers responsible for gas and electric pre-construction design activities.
PSE recognized that their engineer training program could help the company compete for talent in a market that is dominated by some of the highest esteemed tech companies in the nation. The Seattle hiring pool has high expectations for development opportunities and career paths. It is essential that PSE’s training programs embrace this new audience—the “modern learner.”
Mosaic began their engagement with PSE by defining what makes the modern learner different than previous generations, and how training programs can adapt to this new audience. The result is a definition that includes the following traits and expectations:
To support PSE in attracting and retaining a modern workforce, Mosaic is building a training program that provides a bridge between learning and the work engineers do within the context of actual projects. The C&SP program includes six components:
Ultimately, this comprehensive C&SP training program is being built to attract and retain the modern learner through increased speed to competency, a transparent and navigable career path, resources and support that are readily available and easy to use, and training that is digestible and directly applicable to the work they do.