The Public Works Authority (Ashghal) has focused on the promotion of innovation and change and professional project management through a series of special workshops and courses.
These are part of initiatives carried out by the authority to hone the skills of Qatari employees, according to a statement.
Ashghal’s promotion of innovation and change programme, designed by a leading training institute, aims to promote awareness - among the authority’s leaders and managers - on the importance of innovation and change in the success of any organisation or authority.
The programme has held its first session in the presence of employees from the drainage networks operation and maintenance department in Asset Affairs.
The statement further notes that Ashghal co-operates with the Project Management Institute in organising the project management professional course.
The course is held over five days, seeking to enhance the skills of project managers with regard to the importance of a project’s schedule and determining the start and end of each of its stages to ensure its completion on time, as well as the importance of monitoring and controlling the project’s progress from inception to delivery.
The first session of the professional project management course was attended by 20 senior engineers and specialised employees from various departments in the authority.
Meanwhile, the training and development department organised workshops on project management for non-specialists with the help of certified trainers from within the authority.
The workshops aimed to spread the project management culture among all Ashghal employees, even those not officially specialising in the field of project management. These courses are held in co-operation with a renowned training institution.
Ashghal has also organised workshops that aim to improve the skills of internal trainers. These workshops address presentation methods and focus on how to improve training lecturers’ skills and identify their responsibilities. The courses were conducted in December 2014 for groups of candidate trainers. All participants received training certificates.
One of the latest training programmes applied by Ashghal is the value engineering course. Value engineering is defined as an organised group effort in analysing the functions of a project, matching them with the objectives and requirements of the owner and beneficiary, and then creating alternatives that perform these functions and achieve the objectives at the lowest possible cost, without any prejudice to the quality and key functions.
An advanced course in this field was held recently by Ashghal, which was attended by 23 specialised senior engineers and managers in the authority.
The training was supervised by the American institute, Safe International.
The work planning, organising and time management course teaches trainees the skills needed to organise their daily tasks, plan the next work schedule and identify their goals. It also teaches them to effectively manage time for all of their responsibilities and enhance interaction and productivity at work.
Within the framework of self-development plans, 13 employees from various departments and grades participated in the course, which was supervised by trainers with doctorate degrees in management.
After studying the actual training needs of a number of employees from different departments, Ashghal organised a course to enhance co-ordination and interaction among all departments. The course aimed to increase the co-ordination efficiency between various departments of the authority, which would help improve their performance and accomplish tasks faster and with higher accuracy.
The course was presented by a specialised trainer and attended by 18 Qatari employees from various departments and levels in the authority.
A session from the time management course.
