Drainage work is often urgent, wet and dirty, and it peaks around the rains. Here is how to run the crews who install, clear and repair it.
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Share your requirementsA gutter and drainage contractor installs and cleans rainwater gutters and downpipes, builds stormwater drains and soak pits, lays pipes and chambers, clears blocked drains and manholes and repairs waterlogging around buildings, plots and parking. The calendar is set by the rains. Before the monsoon there is a rush of cleaning and repair, during it urgent calls about flooding, and after it digging and laying while the ground is workable. Crews work at height on gutters, and below ground in trenches, chambers and drains, in wet and unhealthy conditions. Customers include apartment societies, factories, schools and homes. Work is physical and unpleasant, so people leave and are hard to replace. See also HR for construction and real estate.
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.
Everyone wants work done in the same weeks, so extra people are taken on in a hurry and joining checks and briefings are skipped.
Chambers, manholes and deep trenches bring risk of gas, collapse and infection, yet who is trained and who is not is rarely written down.
Gutter fitters climb ladders and slippery roofs, and falls are a real risk when pressure to finish is high.
The unpleasant nature of drain cleaning makes retention hard, and the dignity, protection and pay of these workers are rarely discussed.
Flooding calls arrive at night and in downpours, and the same experienced staff are called every time with unclear reward.
After the season, work thins out and people are laid off or drift away, so the next season begins again with a thin team.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Onboarding and Probation. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for construction and real estate, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
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.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
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.
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 gutter and drainage contractors business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A month-by-month view of demand, who is needed and when to start hiring, with a returning-worker list.
What this coversHideA month-by-month view of demand, who is needed and when to start hiring, with a returning-worker list. See workforce planning.
A clear list of who may enter a chamber or climb a roof, how they were trained and when it is refreshed, kept as a record.
What this coversHideA clear list of who may enter a chamber or climb a roof, how they were trained and when it is refreshed, kept as a record. The health, safety and wellbeing work covers the routine.
Proper protective gear, health check arrangements, a fair pay premium and a way to raise concerns, so the hardest work is not the least cared for.
What this coversHideProper protective gear, health check arrangements, a fair pay premium and a way to raise concerns, so the hardest work is not the least cared for.
A named rota for flood and blockage calls with notice, travel arrangements and a clear payment rule, held in the attendance and leave process.
What this coversHideA named rota for flood and blockage calls with notice, travel arrangements and a clear payment rule, held in the attendance and leave process.
Maintenance contracts, pre-monsoon cleaning plans and training in the quiet months, so the team keeps its core and does not start from nothing.
What this coversHideMaintenance contracts, pre-monsoon cleaning plans and training in the quiet months, so the team keeps its core and does not start from nothing.
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.
A seasonal plan that starts hiring before the rush, not during it.
Records and routines for confined-space, height and wet-work risks.
A fast but proper induction for the extra people taken on for the season.
Keeping a core team through the slow months and difficult work.
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
Hiring decisions made one request at a time, in the month the pain is worst. What a workforce plan contains and why a twelve-month view changes what you hire.
7 min readRead article
A laminated notice, an annual drill, and an incident register with three entries in two years. What workplace health and safety looks like when it is real.
7 min readRead article
A practical joining checklist covering documents, assets, system access and statutory enrolments, with owners and timings, so nobody's first salary is wrong.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Keep a list of returning workers, use a short standard induction and brief each person on safety before the first job. Begin earlier than you think you need to.
Only people who have been trained, briefed and are working with a partner on the surface. Take specialist advice and confirm your obligations with a qualified professional.
Provide good protective equipment, fair pay, regular health attention and respect. Rotate duties where possible and listen to what makes the work harder than it needs to be.
Use a rota so the load is spread, pay a clear rate for call-outs and record the call. Avoid relying on the same few willing people every time.
Sell maintenance contracts and pre-monsoon cleaning, use the time for training and certification, and plan so that core staff keep earning.
The conversation would cover how you hire for the rain season, who is certified for confined-space and height work, and how emergency calls are shared among crews. A sensible first piece of work is a season plan and a short certification record for chamber and roof work. Afterwards we write down the proposed scope and fee, and you decide.
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