An aluminium fabricator cuts, assembles and fixes windows, partitions and facades. Errors in a measurement cost a whole frame. This is how to run workshop staff, site fixers and measurement teams.
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Share your requirementsAn aluminium fabrication contractor measures openings on site, cuts and assembles profiles in a workshop, and sends fixers to install windows, sliding doors, partitions and sometimes facades. A small office handles quotation, drawings and purchase of sections, glass and hardware. The workshop has cutting saws, drilling and assembly benches. Site fixers work at height, often from the outside of buildings, with glass and heavy frames. A wrong measurement is only found at installation, when the frame does not fit and the job goes back. Teams are small and split between workshop and sites, and the best fixers are in demand with many competing contractors. For the wider sector, read HR for the construction industry.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in aluminium fabrication contractors. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
A few millimetres off at site becomes a failed frame, and the measurer and workshop blame each other.
Harness points are missing, and an urgent job is done without them.
Cutters never see the site problem, and fixers cannot fix a workshop error.
A competitor offers a higher day rate, and a crew leaves mid-project.
Cut injuries and dropped panes are treated as accidents rather than training gaps.
Prices miss scaffold, lift or night work needs, and the margin disappears.
Nobody knows how often jobs are redone or whose error caused it.
Cutters rush to earn more, and tolerance errors follow.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Retention and Attrition Management; Learning and Development. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for construction and real estate, not in general.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a aluminium fabrication contractors business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A second person checks every measurement sheet before cutting starts, with initials on the sheet.
A second person checks every measurement sheet before cutting starts, with initials on the sheet.
Harnesses, lanyards and anchor checks, with a short test for each fixer.
Harnesses, lanyards and anchor checks, with a short test for each fixer. See health and safety routines.
Cutters join a site install once a quarter to see how fit and tolerance matter.
Cutters join a site install once a quarter to see how fit and tolerance matter. This feeds learning and development.
Helper, fixer, lead fixer and site supervisor, with pay at each step, benchmarked using compensation data.
Helper, fixer, lead fixer and site supervisor, with pay at each step, benchmarked using compensation data.
A log of every redo with the reason and the team involved, reviewed monthly.
A log of every redo with the reason and the team involved, reviewed monthly.
Pay for pieces passed at assembly check, not just pieces cut.
Pay for pieces passed at assembly check, not just pieces cut.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Height work and glass handling routines that fixers follow.
Rotation and a fixer ladder that spread skill.
Day rates and package comparisons to resist poaching.
Rework and fitting accuracy used as team measures.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in construction and real estate, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Site engineers, supervisors, crews and sales teams leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it between projects.
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A shift, weekly and monthly safety routine for rubber plants that names who checks platen guards, mill trip bars, autoclave doors, burst-test cages and slings, and who acts on near misses.
7 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Add a second check, record the measurer's name and review every failed frame with both site and workshop.
Give a clear ladder, steady work and fair day rates. Poachers win where the path ahead is unclear.
Harnesses, anchor points, trained crews and a stop-work rule. Confirm duties with a qualified professional.
Only if rejected pieces reduce the pay, otherwise haste wins. Confirm wage rules with a qualified professional.
Rotate people, hold a weekly review of rework and share the cost of errors openly.
We would look at measurement sign-off, height work records and the fixer ladder. Scope, timing and fees are written down so you know what you are buying.
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