SCADA companies build the screens, alarms and historians that let operators watch and run a plant. Their engineers split time between software desks and customer control rooms, and duty continues long after go-live.
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Share your requirementsA SCADA company designs supervisory control and data systems for water works, substations, process plants and factories. A job starts with the process and the customer's I/O list. Engineers then build HMI screens, alarm lists, historian tags and reports, link to PLCs and RTUs, and prove the logic on a simulator at factory acceptance. Site acceptance and commissioning happen in the customer's control room, inside a short plant shutdown. After go-live the system must stay up, so support engineers take calls at night. Process understanding matters as much as coding, and customers lean on the one engineer who knows their plant. Handover documents decide whether the customer can run alone. See also HR for manufacturing.
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 SCADA systems companies. 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.
Customers ring whoever built their system. When that person quits or takes leave, support falls apart.
A plant stoppage gives a narrow slot to cut over. Engineers work long stretches with no room to slip.
After-hours alarm calls land on the same few people, and rest and thanks are left vague.
As-built drawings, tag lists and operator guides are written in a rush once the site team has gone, if at all.
A software engineer new to water or power learns the process by making mistakes on a live plant.
The desk side wants test time. The site side faces the shutdown date. The gap opens at commissioning.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Organisation Design; Employee Administration; Learning and Development. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
How many people, in which roles, by when, and what they will cost.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
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.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
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 SCADA systems companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Every live system gets two engineers with shared notes, so support never rests on one person.
Every live system gets two engineers with shared notes, so support never rests on one person. See role design and job descriptions.
A schedule that covers handover between engineers, rest between long stretches and a backup for each key task.
A schedule that covers handover between engineers, rest between long stretches and a backup for each key task. See attendance, shift and leave process.
A shared roster for after-hours calls with time off after a night call and clear recognition, with the legal side checked by a qualified professional.
A shared roster for after-hours calls with time off after a night call and clear recognition, with the legal side checked by a qualified professional.
As-built drawings, tag lists and operator guides get an owner and a date ahead of the payment milestone.
As-built drawings, tag lists and operator guides get an owner and a date ahead of the payment milestone. See HR documentation process.
A short learning plan on the water, power or process plants you serve, paired with a senior.
A short learning plan on the water, power or process plants you serve, paired with a senior. See learning and development process.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. Work through the checks using a recent operating period. The time needed depends on the records you hold; note missing evidence and use the findings to choose a priority.
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.
Primary and backup engineer roles with clear duties, so no customer hangs on one person.
Commissioning and on-call rosters with rest rules built in.
Handover and knowledge records written during the project, not after it.
Plant-process learning plans for software engineers moving into new industries.
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 manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why the best operator can struggle as shift supervisor, what it costs the line, and a practical way to choose, prepare and back new supervisors in any kind of plant.
7 min readRead article
A founder's guide to building job grades, titles and billing levels for a growing IT services firm, with a step-by-step method and a grade description outline.
6 min readRead article
Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
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.
Name a backup for every customer, share notes and let the backup join a visit or two. Review the pairings each quarter.
Build the schedule with rest inside it, name a backup for each key task and agree in advance who decides if a delay is called.
A shared rota, time off after night calls and clear recognition. Check the employment side with a qualified professional.
Treat them as a project stage with a named owner, tied to a milestone. Read a sample before sign-off.
Pair them with a senior, give short lessons on the process and let them shadow a commissioning before they lead one.
We would line up customers against the engineer who knows them, count who has a named backup and see how night calls are shared. A sensible opening job is a primary and backup engineer scheme. We put the scope in writing once we have spoken.
All 7 business types in industrial automation and robotics · Find another business type
Tell us your industry, team size and the issue you want to address. Bring one example of where work gets delayed or ownership is unclear, and the deadline or decision you are working towards.
