Mid-Career Training – The Hidden Challenge in India’s Construction Industry
The construction industry in India has grown rapidly over the past two decades, becoming one of the largest employers of both direct and indirect workforce. Supporting this growth are millions of knowledge workers—engineers, architects, consultants, subject matter experts, supervisors, and support staff—who form the backbone of the sector.
One of the major challenges facing the industry today is the lack of mid-career training across all levels of the workforce. Skills and knowledge have traditionally been passed from one professional to another—tradesperson to tradesperson, supervisor to supervisor, engineer to engineer—ensuring continuity and industry standards. However, the rapid pace of change in recent years has disrupted this process, threatening the seamless flow of expertise. It is possible that the last 25 years have seen more construction activity than the previous century combined.
Training Gap in the Industry
Despite growth, the industry has not given proportional importance to training professionals during their careers. Evidence of this includes:
Even small, consistent training efforts can have a significant impact. For instance, if each company trains one employee per month, across more than 10,000 companies in the sector, over 1.2 lakh professionals could be trained annually—a substantial first step toward continuous improvement.
Industry Observations
This disconnect highlights the urgent need for hard-nosed training and mentoring to preserve industry standards and ensure future growth.
INSTRUCT’s Contribution
All is not lost. INSTRUCT has conducted more than a dozen training programmes over recent months, all of which were fully subscribed, with several in high demand for outstation editions. Additionally, INSTRUCT has delivered corporate training programmes for entire teams of engineers and managers.
Key benefits of INSTRUCT programmes include:
- Practical, application-focused learning
- Customised content based on organisational needs
- A combination of classroom sessions, on-the-job training, role plays, and case studies
- Emphasis on knowledge transfer and long-term professional growth
All is not lost. INSTRUCT has conducted more than a dozen training programmes over recent months, all of which were fully subscribed, with several in high demand for outstation editions. Additionally, INSTRUCT has delivered corporate training programmes for entire teams of engineers and managers.