It is failry common to come across lots of people in planning who are actively engaged in planning but have never visited or worked on the site. This is deeply disturbing. It also applies to other industries as well as you must have noticed. Well, in any case, I belong to the Construction industry and have come across a number of people, at all levels, who may have walked into the construction industry to 'n' number of reasons but at least in my opinion can not be good planner as they have missed several steps.

The first step is obviously you need to be professionaly qualified for that industry. In case of construction depending on the country you are coming from you could be an engineer, architect or diploma holder in those disciplines.

The second step is that you should have spend some time on the actual construction site. One needs to have spent at least time on 2-3 construction projects to be able to understand the basics of this industry.

Well, unless you have met at least these two criteria what will you be planning? A planner becomes more of a Data Entry Operator who has to blindly copy the data faithfully onto a system ... filling in the blanks.

Planning is also one of the fundamental requirements or abilities for successful manager. Hence if you want to be a successful manager please do not hestitate to get some grinding on site, industry, factory etc. before you can step in to the world of planning. Once you have done this background check you will be more confident, can relate to the industry that you work for and actually enjoy the work that you do!!!!

To be a good Planner requires a third step as well. A good Mentor!

I hope you look into the rich list of good planners available at Planning Planet and find one according to your industry and tastes.

Happy Planning