The Professional Supervisor Development Program was created in 1994 through a partnership with Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Mr. Decker is a Queen’s Alumni (1970), and when creating a set of consulting materials dealing with Mining Operations (including Safety, Maintenance, Technical Services, etc.), Queen’s University was approached to gauge interest in creating a ‘short course’ for Mine Engineering students. Mr. Decker’s experience, as with a great many others, when moving into supervision early in his career after graduating with a Mining Engineering Degree from Queen’s, included no leadership training of any kind. Engineers, Geologists, and other Professionals have technical training and little training to be supervisors or managers. Tradespeople and Operators who get promoted to Supervisor similarly have good technical training with little to no leadership training. This program is designed to help close that training gap, and to increase capacity and help make more experienced Supervisors better at what they do. We have 25 years of helping “Anybody who achieves results through the efforts of others” improve their job performance. A Queen’s University Certificate is given to each participant, worth 18 Continuing Education Credits.
The Professional Supervisor is still led by Mr. Decker to this day with Senior Partners Aiden Carey and Fernando Jaramillo. Both Mr. Decker and Mr. Jaramillo are fluent in both English and Spanish, and we regularly deliver the program in both languages. We do maintain a small number of Associates to help deliver both the classroom sessions and the field-work portions of the program.
Each year, the classroom portion of the program is delivered at Queen’s University for the Mine Engineering Students. This is a way for us to give back something to new Engineers, many of whom will end up in supervisory and management positions, and often this happens very soon after graduation. Its worth it if we give a few of these next generation of Mining Professionals a little head start for their careers. Of course, it’s also quite fun for us, and we look forward to this every year around PDAC. The Class is Labelled Mining 307 and is a credit course for students.