When Jaeson Osborn talks about the importance of cross-training horizontal directional drilling (HDD) crew members, he’s speaking from experience.
Osborn is president of Q3 Contracting, a Minnesota-based division of Primoris Services Corp. and a construction contracting company that provides a variety of services for its customers in the gas, oil, electric and telecommunications industry.
Osborn’s father ran the business before him, but there was no silver spoon. The younger Osborn got his start as a laborer. He eventually became a pipe fitter and then a drill operator and was cross-trained in other tasks. Then he was a crew foreman, then a supervisor overseeing multiple crews and then a manager. In all, it took him 10 years to move up the ranks.
“I saw that a lot of the successful managers had on-the-job experience,” Osborn says. “The old adage ‘if you can walk a mile in someone’s shoes’ — you can relate to people better if you know how they do their jobs.”
Osborn’s experience helped him become president of Q3 Contracting, and the path he followed is a model for others in the company to move from a hand up to management. At the jobsite level, knowing each other’s jobs also can be hugely beneficial and make a crew more efficient and productive.
“Everybody on the drill crew is important to the next person,” says Tony Bokhoven, training manager at Vermeer. “For example, the guy who is potholing is important because he’s walking the bore path and is seeing the changing ground conditions, and he can communicate that to the person who’s running the locator, and the locator is guiding the drill through the bore path.”
Bokhoven says this applies to the mud man, too, because drilling fluid selection depends on ground conditions. So, if the person doing the potholing understands the job of the person mixing drilling fluids, he will know the importance of sharing those ground conditions. And the drilling fluid and other downhole conditions of course have a big effect on the drill operator and the overall bore.
It’s also important for a drill operator to understand the duties of his fellow crew members. A knowledgeable operator can help set up the jobsite properly, which can help a crew minimize unnecessary work stoppages and other inefficiencies.
Vermeer incorporated this cross-training philosophy in the HDD training course it recently started, called HDD Circuit™. Everyone who goes through the class has the opportunity to learn how to mix drilling fluid, locate utilities, run a locator and operate a drill.
“They leave well-versed in the terms, the process and the importance of what each of those people do,” Bokhoven says.
As Q3 Contracting has shown, cross-training also can help a worker’s career prospects and a company’s ability to develop employees. This is important as underground construction companies continue to struggle to find quality crew members and as an older generation of supervisors retire.
“We have a lot of supervisors who started five years ago who are now running multiple jobsites,” Osborn says. “They started out at the bottom and worked their way up. To really truly embrace it, the ground-up approach is the way to do it.”
Advice or suggestions provided by Osborn are statements of general applicability that may or may not apply to businesses or individuals, whose circumstances and operations may vary. The opinions of Mr. Osborn do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Vermeer Corporation, its dealers or its affiliates.