A township developer is less a builder than a small city's planning office, sales force and construction group in one. Departments multiply, projects overlap for years, and the question is who runs each part and who comes next.
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Share your requirementsA township developer plans and builds a large mixed community over many years: roads, utilities, housing, schools, shops and open spaces, delivered in phases. The firm may run planning, design, land, construction, sales, customer care, estate management and finance, each with its own head. Hundreds of people can work across phases, and the same person may serve one phase now and another later. The founder often still makes many decisions, while the second line has yet to grow into the work. See apartment developers for sales-floor pressure, the developer types hub for comparison, and the sector page for common ground.
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.
The same engineers and coordinators serve two phases, and neither phase head feels the other is fair.
Many choices wait for the owner, and department heads have little practice at deciding on their own.
Titles multiplied during growth, and nobody can explain why one manager has twelve reports and another two.
Staff who joined at launch find the township unfinished years later, and some lose the sense of progress.
The people who sell homes, the people who hand them over and those who run the estate afterwards work in separate silos.
The next phase needs heads who can run bigger teams, and the firm has not trained anyone to do it.
Departments hire on request, with no overall plan for the number of people each phase will need.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Career and Succession Management; Organisation Design. 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.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
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.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
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 township developers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A simple table of roles needed per phase over the next three years, tied to launch and construction plans.
What this coversHideA simple table of roles needed per phase over the next three years, tied to launch and construction plans. See workforce planning.
Show who reports to whom, spans of control and who decides what, and fix the places that do not make sense.
What this coversHideShow who reports to whom, spans of control and who decides what, and fix the places that do not make sense.
Write how borrowing works: who asks, for how long, who pays attention to the loaned person's review.
What this coversHideWrite how borrowing works: who asks, for how long, who pays attention to the loaned person's review.
A programme for the next line of heads, with real tasks and coaching.
What this coversHideA programme for the next line of heads, with real tasks and coaching. The manager development programme gives the frame.
For each department head and project director, list a ready-now and a ready-later name, and review yearly.
What this coversHideFor each department head and project director, list a ready-now and a ready-later name, and review yearly. See succession planning.
A joint monthly meeting and a shared customer note, so the buyer meets one firm.
What this coversHideA joint monthly meeting and a shared customer note, so the buyer meets one firm.
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 multi-year view of how many people each phase and department will need.
A route for growing assistants and coordinators into phase and department heads.
Named successors and development plans for key project and department posts.
A review of how hiring, joining, moves and exits work across departments and phases.
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 two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
7 min readRead article
A flat structure works until the founder becomes the only route to a decision. How to tell when you have passed that point, and how to redesign without a reorganisation.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Take the launch and construction plan, list the roles each phase needs by quarter and compare with who you have. The gaps drive hiring and training.
Start with those that repeat and are low in risk. Define the limits for each head, review monthly and widen the limits as confidence grows.
Mark milestones, rotate people across phases, give development tasks and make the progress visible. A township feels unfinished unless the team sees completed pieces.
It depends on the work. A construction manager with experienced engineers can handle more reports than a sales head with new executives. Review each manager's load, not only the number.
As the team grows past a few hundred, yes. A good HR head owns planning, development and succession, and helps the founder step back.
We would draw your current organisation on one page, list the decisions waiting for the founder and ask each head who could take over. A phase-wise headcount plan with a succession list is a likely first job, and scope is written for your approval.
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