Creating WIs for a Heavy Civil Engineering Services company

[rogerpenna]

The nomenclature is not important here. Objective is to have good material to give training, to workers to see and understand the steps in their jobs.

So, for example. A road has a subgrade (existing soil, which must be levelled with a motorgrader), a subbase (if needed), a base and the top layer (asphalt, concrete, etc)

The subbase can be of two different types of materials (I don´t know their english names, so I wont enter into such details). Each one has a few same steps and a few different steps.

The base layer also has some similar steps. And a few different ones.

The similar steps may have small differences between them.

We consider Subgrade Levelling as a service. Construction of sub-base and base as another service and pavement construction as yet another service. Think of each one as a process.

My question is about your opinions and experiences of what is better, specially if any of you created such documents for construction services.

Would it be better if I created a WI for the entire Process of Sub-Base and base construction?

Several different workers may work on that alone.

Or would it be better if I created a different WI for each step performed by different job category? I just feat that by this way I might end up with 300 different documents, when going through all the services we make and all different steps performed in those services and small differences between them. Although I could group by type of step and then in the same document have topics for when the step is done differently in another service...

 

[Marc]

How big is your company? I.e.: How many employees have to be trained?

 

[AndyN]

Objective is to have good material to give training, to workers to see and understand the steps in their jobs

Are you familiar with "Instructional Design" technique? If you are trying to create training materials, having a good understanding of instructional design techniques is very important.

 

[rogerpenna]

Hmmm... no, I am not familiar with it. Any recommendation?

How big is your company? I.e.: How many employees have to be trained?

about 160 employees. Not all of them participate in all services of course.

 

[rogerpenna]

found a good article about it.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8f4f/1188d52e45818a41dce9d3aa301b9a411866.pdf

apparently, WIs for my sector are a problem around the world.


"However, literature on construction work instructions is scarce. Reviews of construction research topics such as Abudayyeh et al. (2004 and 2006) and Sriprasert and Dawood (2001) show no research on work instructions. Most of the literature on construction communication does not address the communication of instructions to laborers but focuses on communication at the design and management levels (Terry, 1996; Bakos, 1997; Cory, 2001; Gilleard and Gilleard, 2002) or discusses language barriers (Loosemore and Lee, 2002) "


"Smith and Goodman (1984) discuss how explanatory schemes that organize instruction steps based on the structure or the function of the elements to be built contribute to a faster reading and higher comprehension of instructions (these are related to the instructions’ clarity). In construction, work instructions address a particular building element (e.g., wall, slab, column) or functional system (e.g., ventilation supply, sewage system), so it is not possible or meaningful to organize instruction steps by these criteria as they are common for the whole instruction. Instead, a useful explanatory scheme is organizing the steps by the operation or task acting on that structural element or functional system. "

 

[qualprod]

The nomenclature is not important here. Objective is to have good material to give training, to workers to see and understand the steps in their jobs.

So, for example. A road has a subgrade (existing soil, which must be levelled with a motorgrader), a subbase (if needed), a base and the top layer (asphalt, concrete, etc)

The subbase can be of two different types of materials (I don´t know their english names, so I wont enter into such details). Each one has a few same steps and a few different steps.

The base layer also has some similar steps. And a few different ones.

The similar steps may have small differences between them.

We consider Subgrade Levelling as a service. Construction of sub-base and base as another service and pavement construction as yet another service. Think of each one as a process.

My question is about your opinions and experiences of what is better, specially if any of you created such documents for construction services.

Would it be better if I created a WI for the entire Process of Sub-Base and base construction?

Several different workers may work on that alone.

Or would it be better if I created a different WI for each step performed by different job category? I just feat that by this way I might end up with 300 different documents, when going through all the services we make and all different steps performed in those services and small differences between them. Although I could group by type of step and then in the same document have topics for when the step is done differently in another service...

Roger

There are several issues involved here:

1- I have developed similar documents for mechanic engineering and I did it in this way:
First , Defined a SOP (father), into it defined the scope , purpose, then when needed to describe details of an activity, created WI´s (sons)
but all the Wi´s were referenced from the master.
It works to split the activities in WI´s , because as you said, not all workers will need all the WI´s.

2- Regarding to the extent of the documents, ISO doesn´t ask you to have them detailed as you need them.
Is up to you to define the extent based on your needs, first think it twice, are your worried to comply the standard?
or are you thinking in prepare documents which can help to develop your projects better?
Hope this helps

 

[John Broomfield]

The Corps of Engineers and other expert organizations in road construction have published excellent books on stabilizing, grading, selecting, laying and compacting the layers making up a road pavement.

The workers are recruited with the required attributes and trained so they are safe and competent according to the amount of direct supervision they receive in completing the task.

Management and competent engineers also ensure the road building crew is supplied with the skills, knowledge, materials, facilities and equipment required to fulfill the specified requirements.

As ISO 9001 makes clear, they may not need documented work instructions for the satisfactory completion of this work.

These facts may explain why such instructions are rare.

As a manager monitoring this work we’d look for evidence of the necessary resources and controls.

Managers should not expect an auditor to do this instead; to do so would probably be a nonconformity.

 

[AndyN]

I guess it comes down to the purpose of WIs (or whatever you wish to call them). Do we really "train" people using them as a basis, or are the WIs used to communicate requirements? Would an untrained person, if you had them "trained" using a recipe, for example, be able to cook/bake without supervision?

 

[John Broomfield]

I guess it comes down to the purpose of WIs (or whatever you wish to call them). Do we really "train" people using them as a basis, or are the WIs used to communicate requirements? Would an untrained person, if you had them "trained" using a recipe, for example, be able to cook/bake without supervision?

Andy,

Not in my experience.

Creating and maintaining a set of documented work instructions so a road crew could use them to bake a cake, sorry, build a road would be prohibitively expensive.

Those instructions would have to be written for grade 4 legibility in a variety of different languages.

Looking a the booming cook book industry they’d have to come with photographs and a passion for baking. So eager and passionate that us novice cooks buy our own work instructions! Then we follow them to the letter until we no longer need them.

Competent road crews can motivate themselves to do a good job without documented work instructions but a few may peel-off with the “leftover materials” to tarmac a nearby householder’s drive.

 

[AndyN]

Maybe my fault, but you missed my point, John...