I have been a T&D professional for many years but recently agreed to an engagement to do a competency study for a client, ie, determine the technical and non-technical competencies for each position). Does anyone have a good "how to" resource they can recommend? Thanks.

Assuming your client has not invested in a competency model/database and you are building this from scratch...

Approach this like you would any needs assessment. The goal is to find out what competencies the top performers have, compare that to the competencies of the lowest (good) performer and then conduct a gap analysis.

The challenge is that you will end up with a list of invaluable "competencies" that have nothing or very little to do with success for the incumbent.

Remember that competencies are like Lego's, many different skills can be combined to get to the same point. Approach the task by looking at the incumbents as stratified layers of skills. With each project and experience new layer is added, or eroded, as is the case with a negative performer.

Good luck!

Have you considered using the DACUM method?