Organization Overview
Kiewit is one of the most respected American engineering and construction companies specializing in infrastructure, production, mine management, contract mining ventures, and maintenance. Founded in 1884, it now has about 28,000 employees – experienced and high-skilled specialists who make a positive difference in industries like mining and building, water, gas, and others (“What We Do,” 2022). Having an employee ownership model as its basis, Kiewit offers “a combination of a competitive salary and benefits, including a best-in-class retirement savings plan and generous time off” (“What We Do,” 2022, para. 6). Our values are people, integrity, excellence, and stewardship, and we maintain a welcoming and ethical culture (“About Us,” 2022). Our mission is to offer high-quality services and promote safety and innovation in all our operations. One of our goals is to ensure compliance with significant regulatory rules and requirements (“About Us,” 2022). Finally, our competitive position is the use of artificial intelligence and the focus on ethical and moral behavior.
Organizational Strategy
At Kiewit, we pursue a differentiation strategy that allows us to achieve our strategic goals. While offering a wide range of services, we, unlike many other firms in the construction industry, focus on introducing innovative solutions when serving our clients and communities and also have a united, success-oriented team. Overall, Kiewit’s first core competency is the increased and even risky use of artificial intelligence, which helps us support the strive for innovation. Thus, according to Patterson (2020), “Kiewit captures historical project data and performance benchmarks through AI and uses this data to objectively quantify the risk and reward on each project” (para. 1). Such an uncommon approach allows us to remain highly competitive, which aligns with our strategic goals. The second core competence is the employee ownership model – all specialists are motivated and willing to raise the company to higher levels (Kiewit, 2021). Workers are interested not only in their own wages but also in the profitability of the whole company, meaning that our retention rates are higher. Our strategic map can offer some additional insights.
Identifying Pivotal Positions
A site superintendent is one of the pivotal positions in Kiewit. In a word, superintendents ensure the quality and success of Kiewit’s projects, and the better these professionals do their jobs, the stronger our company’s image is. While we have many talented, committed, and experienced field workers, it may be challenging for them to coordinate their efforts and duties, evaluate progress, solve problems, and maintain communication with vendors. As a consequence, superintendents are responsible for all these operations, as well as the control over AI use, one of the core competencies of Kiewit. The quality of our services depends greatly on how effectively a site superintendent manages the efforts of craft workers and laborers, which eventually strengthens or weakens the firm’s competitiveness. The communicative skills of superintendents maintain the required relations between clients, employees, and vendors, as well as motivate craft workers and ensure a friendly environment (Snell & Morris, 2019). Therefore, this A position requires A players (Huselid et al., 2005) and talented candidates (Boudreau, 2005) (See Table 1 for details).
Table 1: Job Description and Specification
References
About us. (2022). Kiewit. Web.
Boudreau, J. W. (2005). Talentship and the new paradigm for human resource management: From professional practices to strategic talent decision science. Human Resource Planning, 28(2), 17-26.
Huselid, M. A., Beatty, R. W., and Becker, B. E. (2005). “A players” or “A positions”?: The strategic logic of workforce management. Harward Business Review. Web.
Kiewit. (2021).Our core values[PDF document]. Web.
Patterson, D. (2020). Kiewit gains competitive advantage through artificial intelligence. Command Alkon. Web.
Snell, S. A., & Morris, S. S. (2019). Managing human resources. Cengage Learning.
What we do. (2022). Kiewit. Web.