Experience Unparalleled in the Bentley Ecosystem
My first professional training development engagement started in 1995 and ended in 2000 at the City of San Diego supporting Bentley's Engineering Applications.
My last full-time training development postion was Bentley's Civil Training Content Development Manager.
My marriage of hands-on subject matter expertise (actual, responsible engineering) and full-cycle development/delivery/result responsibilty provided me insight and capability decades ago and has informed how I approach systems improvement ever since: Share crowdsourced expertise through scalable effective communication (Just Enough, Just In Time, At Your Fingertips).
Full-Lifecycle Responsiblity
Embedded at the City, I certified the software (starting with InSewer - their Sanitary Sewer Design and drafting program, developed the training and trained over one hundred users.
I didn't realize how rare this opportunity was:
- I started in a responsible and accountable position,
- was in close contact to the learners during the development of the training
- I got to deliver the training, get feedback and refine the material over many weeks.
- I was able to get feedback on the refinements and adjust accordingly.
This process repeated for additonal rollouts of the software include major and minor upgrades (InSewer NT (Windows rather than Unix) and InRoads Storm&Sanitary).
I also developed custom training for and trained the InRoads users.
Leveraging Opportunity
After I had developed a full-suite of training for InRoads and InRoads Storm&Sanitary, I was ready to "go national" but the City of San Diego could not sell outside of San Diego. I could.
I developed my own training in a better, more modular format (Common Core and radial, role specific branches (Road and Drainage)) and trained my material nationally.
Agile Formats
My expertise led to a variety of consulting engagements. With Oklahoma DOT, I developed from scratch a Communication and Training Website that allowed us to educate the userbase on tools, techniques, issues and decisions they would want to make. Agile project management before it was a thing...
I worked with Colorado DOTs migration from AutoDesk to Bentley. I wrote their first draft of the Drainage Design Training (Storm&Sanitary).
I joined Kimley-Horn in 2007 to lead the San Diego office's migration from the v7 platform. I worked with the engineers to determine their preferences (CalTrans had not migrated yet and we wanted to put in place a scalable "practical" workspace that would be easy to later adjust to CalTrans standards. I developed an internal Communication and Training website to allow stakeholder access to the plan and execution of the migration and teach the engineers what they need to know as we moved forward. We upgraded the software and I trained the engineers and was ready to focus on some engineering.
Recruited by Bentley
In some interesting timing, I got a call from the Bentley Account Manager I worked with a Colorado DOT: "Jeff, how would you like to write InRoads Training Material full time?" This was a very interesting offer and an interesting validation of my value as a training innovator because Dan and I, working on opposing sides of the contract, had what I thought of as a somewhat adverserial relationship.
I joined Bentley and the other Southern California Kimley-Horn offices were able to migrate their software platforms from the website I put together for the San Diego office.
Dan and I went on to work together very well for over a decade.
At Bentley, I started with the company's first Advanced InRoads Training Course - a three-day behemoth. I wrote a lot of drainage courseware over the years, and due to my site-development background, wrote a lot of Site Grading courses, including the grafting of GEOPAK Site Modeler into InRoads and the first OpenRoads Site Grading course. Note that the current "Site Modeling and Non-Corridor Modeling" is a subset of my original course. The remainder is available here: Civil Help - Grading: Draping Surfaces for Drainage
Transforming the Training
The most valuable experience I had with Bentley was a three-month "Training Training" program where we studied learning theory and transformed how we developed our training. I was the only Bentley Civil Content Developer at the time. From "Just in Case" giant monoliths to "Just Enough" consumable modules. "Just in Time" was achieved by porting all the material to the OnDemand platform: the Bentley LearnServer (Learn.Bentley.com).
As I responded to a Bentley Civil Consulting team colleague comment "But that's not how we want to teach":
"It's not about how we want to teach, it's about how they want to learn!"
One can argue about shortcomings of Bentley's LearnServer, but it is by far the most comprehensive, updated, and consumable training platform available for Bentley software. I'm proud of my leadership through that transformation.
(Ultimately, I felt compelled climb down from that ivory tower and to get back embedded in the trenches. Get my street cred street cred back.
I am now back at Kimley-Horn and (again) working to enhance the process of sharing our broad and deep infrastructure expertise.
Interested in more? Audience/Consumption-oriented Training Design