“You’re either growing or dying. Stagnation does not exist in the universe.” – Steve Siebold
A new year, a new set of goals, and new exciting projects. Haydon Bridge Company has a reputation, from day one to over 50 years later of being a highway and bridge construction company that produces quality work with high standards, honesty, integrity and efficiency without cutting corners. Regardless of innovations in technology and processes, those values will never change.
The road and bridge construction industry has evolved significantly due to advancements in technology, materials, and sustainability practices. Such evolutions over the years include:
- Advanced Materials and Techniques: Stronger, more durable materials extend the lifespan of roads and bridges while reducing maintenance needs
- Automation, 3D Modeling & BIM (Building Information Modeling): Allows for precise project planning, reducing errors and waste, and helps predict wear and tear, optimizing maintenance schedules and improving safety.
- Sustainability & Eco-Friendly Practices: With recycled materials, some roads are now built using recycled plastic. With permeable pavements, solar roads and carbon-neutral concrete, some roads are designed to reduce flooding by allowing water to pass through. And with Carbon-Neutral Concrete Development of low-carbon and carbon-capturing concrete, this industry can help reduce emissions.
- Safety & Resilience, as well as Compliance: With improved worksite safety, ongoing safety training, safety audits and consistent monitoring with drones and AI-enhanced monitoring systems, we are ensuring employee safety and reducing occurrences of accidents or injuries.
- Skilled & Professional Team: Our road and bridge construction company needs skilled workers to support our continued growth and commitment to delivering high-quality infrastructure projects. As demand for new construction and maintenance increases, our workforce has had to expand to ensure efficiency, safety, and innovation in every project we undertake.
“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement and success have no meaning.” – Benjamin Franklin
We could not agree more, as we understand in business, stagnation is detrimental. It’s imperative for our business to grow, evolve, expand and learn. Sustained growth is crucial for survival, competitiveness, safety, efficiency, and prosperity, requiring businesses to continuously adapt and innovate to remain relevant. So what’s new in 2025? With a very successful few years, we are currently working on office expansions, a recent addition of a new position, as well as our new training and development program.
Main Headquarters Office Expansion
Our main office is located at 703 Old Lebanon Road Springfield, KY since 1980, where we have over 2000 square feet of office space and a small conference room, as well as four acres for equipment and material storage buildings. As our company and our team have expanded in the past five years, we realized the main office building also needs an expansion and renovation.
We are expanding our office and training space by doubling the square footage of our current building to accommodate additional workspace. This expansion will include a dedicated conference and training room equipped with three large-screen monitors, as well as state-of-the-art audiovisual and conferencing equipment.
We expanded our headquarters to create additional office space for business administration, but our primary goal was to provide more room for both in-person and online training. This ensures our staff receives ongoing education as technology, equipment, and software continue to evolve. Additionally, we prioritize keeping our team fully informed on safety procedures and accident prevention protocols to minimize risks and prevent injuries. Lastly, our training programs are designed to support career growth, equipping our employees with the skills and knowledge needed for advancement.
New Position and a New Hire: Will Pettus
We have recently hired Will Pettus, as our Learning and Development Specialist. A Learning and Development (L&D) Specialist is responsible for designing, implementing, and managing training programs that enhance employee skills, knowledge, and performance. Their primary goal is to support professional growth, ensure compliance with industry standards, and improve overall workplace efficiency.
Will joined us in November of 2024 and is playing an instrumental part in documenting numerous aspects of our business in video form. Will is helping our Project & Safety Managers capture, edit & document procedural videos that will be shared with all Haydon Bridge employees on our video training platform. His responsibilities including gathering media input through pictures and video, then edits and formats that into training videos to be used for all levels of employees.
Although Will’s position is new, he provides great value and purpose for our company’s high standards of quality and safety. Our management team’s goal is to capture every process in the company in video form, create lessons and lesson plans for each process, then be able to use those videos to increase efficiency and reinforce safety practices at our jobsites. The position of a Learning and Development specialist was added to the team for the sole purpose of creating content for training documentation, equipment functionality, historical data and record keeping from day-to-day operations, as well as marketing and promotional video, photos and content.
His video production and content creations have allowed our Project Managers and our safety manager to have more time to dedicate to their primary role’s responsibilities and duties. It has also alleviated the need for us to utilize a third-party remote contractor that we have been using for video production and editing, as well as speed up the production phase so videos are being produced in-house with a reduction of cost and time to produce. With Will now as the producer and editor of all of our videos, there is no longer a need for outside help.
What has he accomplished thus far? While some legacy videos exist, he has enhanced this significantly by adding AI voice-over to help explain the why and what in each video. To date, we have published 82 videos with another 196 in the pipeline in some form or fashion; thus, we have made tremendous progress since his arrival. And with him being in-house, working side by side with the management team, administration team and project managers, Will is learning the bridge and heavy road construction inside out, therefore the content he produces has great expertise, higher authority and is authentic to our specific branding. All of Will’s work is captured in video form and will be utilized to improve procedures, to educate staff and to facilitate career growth within our ranks.
We aim to implement a training curriculum consisting of micro-lesson videos that crews can watch before performing their tasks. This approach ensures they understand work processes and safety protocols in advance. We will manage this video-based training through a Learning Management System (LMS), allowing us to distribute both in-house and external training videos as needed.
For example, if a team is scheduled to work on process ‘A’ tomorrow, involving six members with different responsibilities, we can assign a tailored video series to each individual beforehand. These videos will outline the overall process, each team member’s role, the key steps for completing tasks safely and efficiently, and the standards for success. By assigning these videos in advance, we ensure a clear, consistent message, reduce the time field foremen spend on training, and establish a standardized approach to defining and achieving success.
Another example is the silicosis training we previously blogged about. By converting this training into video format and assigning it to our crews in advance, they can familiarize themselves with the material before our discussion. This way, when we review the reasons for silica protection, they will have already watched the videos, allowing them to better understand and engage with the conversation.
In Phase I of this new position, our focus will be primary on video production, but as Will’s skillsets and expertise continue to expand, he will expand his role. As the video production phase nears completion, he will begin training and gaining knowledge in the field of safety. His formal education will come from OSHA institutes and/or college courses, while on-the-job training will take place at our worksites in the field.
Training Program Development
Young generations, particularly Gen Z, often prefer learning through videos over books because they find the visual and interactive nature of video content more engaging, accessible, and aligned with their digital lifestyle. Workers in the younger age groups are well acquainted with platforms like YouTube providing a readily available source of information that can be easily paused, rewound, and consumed at their own pace; essentially making learning feel more dynamic and less like a passive activity compared to reading text in a book.
Considering the impact of visual learning over traditional book learning, Haydon Bridge Company has been working over the past few years in creating Educational/Instructional Videos on construction safety, procedure, equipment usage and company-specific administrative tools and procedures for improved communication and data-tracking.
We have seen a huge increase in knowledge retention for new hires with the use of video microlearning modules, that break content into short and digestible video lessons (of 5-20 minutes).
Utilizing the experience of our seasoned, talented and skilled employees or soon-to-be retired employees, we have created training modules that use real-life or relatable scenarios to contextualize the training material. We are working hard on cataloging the huge knowledge base and real-world scenarios of our loyal employees who’ve been with HBC for decades. Introducing these employees to new hires via interviews provides a library of the lessons learned including:
- troubleshooting of issues,
- in-the-field resolutions to challenges,
- valued implementation of safety procedures, and
- the successful completion of projects.
We will continue to provide training and instruction in person and through classroom sessions, especially once our building expansion is completed with the addition of a fully equipped classroom/conference room. However, we will complement this in-person training with video content, as you mentioned. These videos may be standalone lessons or grouped together into a structured “video course.”
In Conclusion
Growth often necessitates innovation and improvement in products, services, and processes, leading to better overall customer experience, a higher quality product, higher retention of our satisfied workforce, and becoming more attractive to talented and skilled employees. It is our continued goal to provide employees with a safe, honest and team-oriented work environment, where individuals are allowed to grow while working with a team, and to provide exceptional workmanship within the heavy civil construction market.
