How should we structure pay for commissioning engineers who travel?

Two engineers from one controls firm spend three weeks at a customer's bottling plant. They share a lodge room, one punch list and the same late nights during the cut-over. On the train home they compare notes. One was paid a higher daily allowance because he asked for it before leaving. The other never asked. By the next month, every engineer in the office was haggling before each trip.

Travel pay at integrators and controls firms usually goes wrong this way. Nobody designs it. Each trip is settled between one engineer and one manager, and the settlements drift apart. Within a year there are as many travel deals as there are engineers.

Split the money into two parts. Salary belongs to the engineer's level: what they can program, test and commission without help. Site pay covers the cost and strain of being away. That means allowances for days at a plant, rules for travel days, pay or time back for weekends worked, and rest after a long stretch. Put the site rules on one page and apply them to everyone. The automation and robotics HR guide treats commissioning as a role of its own for this reason.

Fold site money into salary and two problems follow. Engineers who rarely travel feel underpaid beside colleagues who are always away, even at the same level. And an engineer who moves from site work to design takes a pay cut nobody planned. Keep the level salary steady. Let the site element rise and fall with the days actually spent at a plant. Compensation benchmarking shows where each level sits against outside offers, so the salary stands on its own terms.

• Daily site allowance. One flat per-diem for each day at a customer plant, set by location band, so nobody negotiates it per trip.
• Lodging, laundry and local conveyance. Booked centrally, or paid against receipts up to a stated cap, with taxi or auto-rickshaw fares to the plant gate included. Name the approver for exceptions.
• Travel days. Define when a journey counts as a site day, such as an overnight train or a departure before noon.
• Weekends and holidays at site. Paid at a stated rate, or returned as days off within a fixed window. Pick one.
• Home-leave after a long stretch. Days off owed after a set run of site-days, taken before the next trip is booked.
• Call-backs. A rule for the engineer pulled back to a plant soon after handover, often for a fault that was not theirs.
• Imprest and vouchers. How much cash goes out as imprest before departure, and how quickly vouchers are settled afterwards.

Applies to: every engineer and technician sent to a customer site, at any level.
Daily site allowance: one flat amount per site day, by location band A, B or C.
Lodging: booked centrally; if self-booked, paid on receipts up to the band cap, with laundry after [ ] nights.
Travel day: counts as a site day when the journey is overnight or starts before noon.
Weekend or holiday worked at site: the stated rate, or one day back within [ ] days.
Home-leave: [ ] days off after every [ ] continuous site-days, taken before the next trip.
Call-back within [ ] weeks of handover: treated as a fresh trip, allowance from day one.
Imprest: up to [ ] days of per-diem before departure. Vouchers settled within [ ] working days.
Exceptions: approved in writing by the owner or operations head, and logged below.
Review: every six months, with two travelling engineers in the room.

These three rules cause most of the arguments. An engineer who leaves at five in the morning for a nine-hour drive has worked a day, even if no panel was powered. A weekend spent on loop checks during a plant shutdown is a weekend lost at home. A three-week stretch that ends with a Monday back in the office wears people down faster than any single long day. Decide each rule once. Log travel days, comp-offs and home-leave in your attendance and leave records, so payroll and the project manager read the same numbers.

The sheet only works if it beats the private deal. Publish it to everyone who travels. Apply it to the senior engineer and the trainee alike. When a trip really is unusual, such as a remote mine site or a cut-over during a festival, approve the exception in writing. If it will happen again, add a line to the sheet. Engineers stop asking before each trip once asking no longer changes the answer.

1. 1

   Should commissioning engineers earn a higher salary than designers?

   Only if their level is higher. If site life is the difference, pay it through the sheet, so the gap disappears when the travelling does.

2. 2

   Should we pay a bonus for finishing commissioning on time?

   A small project close payment can work. Tie it to what the engineer controls, such as a signed punch list and a complete handover pack, not to customer delays.

3. 3

   What about engineers who never travel?

   They earn the level salary. If you need more people willing to go, make site experience a requirement for promotion instead of paying for willingness.

4. 4

   What stops the sheet going out of date?

   Log every exception. Three exceptions of the same kind mean the sheet needs a new line, and the six-monthly review is where it gets added.

Pull last quarter's trips from the expense vouchers. For each one, note the engineer, the site, the days away, the weekends worked and what was paid. Put the rows side by side and the uneven deals jump out. Draft the sheet from what you find, test it with two engineers, then publish it. Our post on commissioning as a separate job from design covers rotas and growth paths. See how industrial automation firms set site and on-call rules for the way the two fit together. For help drafting yours, describe your situation on our requirements page.