A demolition contractor brings down buildings and structures safely using breakers, excavators and manual teams. The risks are high and mistakes are costly. This is how to staff, train and protect the people who do it.
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Share your requirementsA demolition contractor takes down old houses, factories, bridges and building parts. Work starts with a survey of structure, services and hazards, then planned removal using breaker-fitted excavators, cutters and manual teams, followed by debris sorting and removal by trucks. A small core of supervisors, operators and a safety lead plans each job, and labour gangs are brought in for manual work. Dust, falling material, asbestos or chemical residues, hidden live services and unstable structures are real hazards. Jobs are short, scattered and often in busy neighbourhoods, so neighbours and authorities watch closely. Salvage of steel and fittings may bring income, and tempt shortcuts. 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 demolition 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 hidden live cable or weak slab is found by accident.
A tired or poorly trained operator brings down a wall in the wrong direction.
Day labourers with no briefing work below overhangs and in dust.
Workers cut steel before the structure is secured because scrap earns money.
Dust, noise and road blocks bring stoppages, and nobody was assigned to handle them.
Small cuts and falls are not recorded, and patterns go unseen.
Crews change from site to site, and lessons from the last job are lost.
Long-term health effects are ignored because gangs change often.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Policies, Compliance and Governance; 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.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
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.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
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 demolition contractors business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A signed hazard survey and method statement before any machine starts.
A signed hazard survey and method statement before any machine starts. Include it in health and safety routines.
Licence, practical test and yearly check, with fatigue limits on hours.
Licence, practical test and yearly check, with fatigue limits on hours. Keep records in employee information.
A short briefing on the day's sequence, exclusion zones and signals, with names recorded.
A short briefing on the day's sequence, exclusion zones and signals, with names recorded.
A rule that salvage starts only when a supervisor releases the area.
A rule that salvage starts only when a supervisor releases the area.
A named person to handle neighbours and authorities, with a log.
A named person to handle neighbours and authorities, with a log. See the grievance process.
A log for near misses and injuries, reviewed weekly, feeding learning and development.
A log for near misses and injuries, reviewed weekly, feeding learning and development.
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.
Survey, briefing and exclusion zone routines for every job.
Operator licences and gang rosters kept and checked.
Operator training and lessons from incidents shared across crews.
A fair route for community and worker complaints and rule breaches.
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.
8 min readRead article
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
How an India head can sort a global parent's HR policies into apply, adapt or replace, write an India addendum with advisers, and keep headquarters on side.
7 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.
A survey, a method statement, isolation of services and a briefing. Have a qualified professional confirm the requirements for your job.
Set maximum hours, share breaks and have a second operator available.
Brief on hazards, signals and zones each morning, record names and keep untrained people away from risky tasks.
Release areas in sequence and forbid cutting before a supervisor allows it.
Name a contact, share the schedule, control dust and noise, and log complaints and responses.
We would look at survey records, operator qualification and the daily briefing. Scope, timing and fees are written down so you know what you are buying.
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