COMPETENCE DEVELOPMENT

Focus on professional and leadership development

Knowledge will always be a competitive advantage in our industry. The value of a construction company is largely a function of its employees' competence. We invest, therefore, substantial resources each year in professional development and maintenance of our people's skills. Our decentralised organisation, with a high degree of local autonomy, also places extra demands on our employees' trades and leadership competence, which is why leadership development will be one of the most important investment areas in 2010.

Broad-based offer through Veidekkeskolen

Veidekkeskolen is our on-site center for learning and development. It offers employees a wide range of courses and development programmes in, for example, the areas of HSE, leadership development, law, technical construction skills, finance and customer relations. Veidekkeskolen activity was high in 2009. In the first half of the year we conducted 2900 training days spread over nearly 1800 participants; a significant increase from the previous year. As of the end of 2009, Veidekke employees could enroll in a total of 64 courses, in topics such as "Universal design", "New energy requirements", "Hazardous waste" and "Recycling sales." In 2010, Veidekkeskolen will focus specifically on HSE and will include a new course in risk analysis, developed in collaboration with Veritas Norway.

Environment – central theme

In the years ahead, environmental challenges will characterise most industries, including the building and construction industry. In terms of competence, we have acknowledged the consequences of this. Today, we have our own apprentices in the area of recycling; our leadership development programmes include climate issues as a specific theme; and we offer several courses to update our employees on the latest developments in materials such as windows, fittings, insulation, etc. Approximately 40 per cent of Norway's total energy consumption goes to heating homes, creating considerable benefits in selecting the most appropriate building solutions in a building process. Knowledge is then a key factor - not at least to be able to see the potential competitive advantages in intelligent environmental solutions. The work of our high efficiency housing, TellHus, is an excellent example of exactly this.

Because of Veidekke's decentralised organisation, we must be especially attentive to the flow of knowledge within the organisation. How, for example, should the knowledge of the high efficiency housing in Trondheim be distributed to the rest of our Scandinavian organisation? The key, we've found, is to make effective meeting places for knowledge and practice exchanges with our teaching staff playing a vital role. In fact, one of their main goals is to create meeting places where professionals can assemble and exchange experiences across regional boundaries.