How do you check a foreman's skills before hiring in Puntland?

A foreman's skills are checked by asking for the last job, two contacts per job, a drawing set from that job and one measured task on your site, then watching how the crew follows the instruction. Certificates help, but the test is whether the work comes out square, level and to the drawing when nobody is standing over the person.

What should a foreman bring to the interview?

Ask for the last three jobs with the plot, the client or contractor and two contacts per job. Ask which part of each job the person ran and who supervised them. A foreman who cannot name a previous supervisor or a site is describing work they watched rather than work they ran.

Then call the contacts. Ask what the foreman did on that job, how many workers reported to them, and what went wrong. Every job has one thing that went wrong. A referee who describes a problem and how it was handled gives you more than a referee who praises without detail.

Ask for the drawings from one of those jobs, or a photograph of the finished work. Compare the drawing with the photograph. A person who kept a marked set and can explain a change made on site has handled the document flow of a job, which is part of the role.

The people and skills section holds our other reporting on workforce checks across the region.

How do you test skill on the site, not on paper?

Set one measured task. Ask the candidate to set out a corner of the building to the drawing, checking the diagonal, with two helpers and the tools already on site. Watch the method, not only the result: how the line is held, how the tape is read, how the helper is told what to do.

A foreman who sets out alone and ignores the helpers will run the crew the same way. A foreman who explains the step to the helper and then checks the result is teaching while working, which is what an informal apprenticeship depends on.

Give the candidate a drawing with one dimension missing or one detail that conflicts with the note. Ask what they would do. The right answer names the engineer, the client or the office that issued the drawing, and stops the work until the answer arrives. A candidate who guesses is telling you how the site will be run.

Which records prove supervision after the hire?

Agree at the start what the foreman will write each day: the work done, the workers present, the materials delivered, the instructions given and who gave them. A short diary entry signed by the foreman and read by you each evening turns supervision into something you can check.

Run the first week as a probation with one specific task and one drawing. Compare the diary with what you saw. Where they differ, ask why that morning, not at the end of the month. The construction risk analyzer lists documentation and quality risks you can work through before the hire is confirmed.

For the diary format itself, see How do you write a site diary that proves who supervised the work in Puntland?. If the foreman will also train younger workers, the pattern in How do training gaps in Burao affect supervisor development? applies to how that teaching is planned and checked.

What to do next

Write the three interview questions and the one measured task on a single sheet. Use the same sheet for each candidate on the same site, and keep the answers with the site records. Call two referees before the test day, and confirm the wage and probation period in writing before work starts.