Planning for the Future, Today: P1 Group Welcomes Summer Interns
Finding and retaining talented employees is an ongoing challenge for any organization, especially in this current precarious job market. The need to grow a talent base has become even more necessary, and the P1 internship program is helping address some of these needs for the immediate future and beyond.
In 2021, Vice President Glenn Shain led the charge for revitalizing the internship program.
He noted that the job market is competitive for all talent levels, but it is nearly impossible to recruit someone for a senior position, referring to the saying “When is the best time to plant a tree? 25 years ago. What is the next best time to plant a tree? Today.”
“To create the talent P1 will need in the future, we must invest in those students that will become senior project managers and estimators in 10-15 years...right now,” Glenn said.
Pictured above, left to right: Senior Project Manager Clinton Gechter and Thomas O'Connor; Senior Project Manager Jason Quattlebaum and Aaron Marting; Superindendent David Becerra and Joshua Farnan.
Sarah Garcia, Director of Organizational and Talent Development, took the ball and ran with it.
“Our goal is to get our interns engaged and learning not only about the industry, but also about P1 specifically, so they will ultimately want to become a permanent member of the P1 team,” Sarah said.
To keep interns busy, a full schedule of structured events is in place to keep them learning, while having some fun.
This year's interns are supporting operation divisions, so they will all spend time with estimating to learn what happens early in the process - and how P1 wins a job - before we get to the point of managing it. The schedule will again include MCAKC events, such as attending industry orientations and tours of union training facilities.
An exciting addition this year is a job site tour at Garmin, partnering with P1's Virtual Design and Construction Division, to show how P1 gets from conceptual idea to a 3D BIM Model, and then to fabrication detail documents.
They will also tour the Architectural Metals shop, which is always a hit.
“The Architectural Metal Shop tour last year was a real highlight because Vice President Allen Supplee did such a great job of showing off what the exciting work the division does, and the interns were very impressed,” Sarah said.
Safety training is again a priority, and has been enhanced for this year. Vice President Don Campbell will present an hour long Intro to Safety course at the beginning of summer to familiarize interns with OSHA regulations and Experience Modification Rates. They will participate in two jobsite audits on two different days, where they will spend all day shadowing Safety, talking about hazards and looking for anything that might be deemed unsafe.
This year, OSHA 10 training has been added, so interns will have an OSHA 10 certificate when they leave.
Several tours with vendors have been scheduled again. Along with Marley Cooling Tower and Jorban Riscoe, electrical vendor VanMeter has been added to the program to the broaden the offering of experiences.
And last, but not least, there will be several opportunities for the interns to interact with each other through shared experiences and P1 hosted fun events. The two recently hired Project Engineers, Austin Matthews and Kyle Groshong, will be included in some activities too.
While all the new additions have been immensely successful, Glenn says there’s always more we can do.
“Not only do we have a need to expand the depth and breadth of talent at P1 to support top line growth, we need to be hiring today to replace the talent that will be exiting the market in the next five to 15 years,” Glenn said.
“That requires us to plant trees today in fertile soil and nurture the growth so we have the talent that carries on the brand and the reputation that sets P1 apart from a very crowded field.”
Pictured above, left to right: Fleet Manager Mike Mosakowski, Lake Williams, and Fleet Manager Nick Miccoli; Thomas O'Connor and Clinton Gechter.
