A solar EPC company designs, procures and builds plants for other people, so its people are spread over live project sites. Engineers, supervisors and installer gangs get moved between projects, and the plan rarely survives the first monsoon.
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Share your requirementsA solar EPC company takes a project from design and procurement through civil work, structure erection, module laying, cabling and commissioning, then hands it to the owner. The head office is small. The real workforce sits on sites in different districts: site engineers, supervisors, electricians and gangs of installers, some on the company rolls and many arriving with a sub-contractor. Each project has a start date, a handover date and a penalty clause in between. People finish one site and are posted to the next, often far away. The wider renewable energy hub and the energy and utilities sector page cover what these businesses share.
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.
When a site is handed over, engineers and supervisors wait for the next order, and the good ones take an offer from a company with steadier work.
Rates differ by site, distance and role, and people compare notes in the camp. Unclear rules turn every posting into a bargain.
Working at height and on live electrical systems needs trained, certified people, and the dates sit in a drawer until a client inspector asks.
Gangs come with a sub-contractor, work through the peak and leave, taking site knowledge with them. Quality varies from gang to gang.
Long stretches in remote locations, rented rooms and poor food wear down the best site engineers, and families feel it first.
A handful of capable site managers carry every difficult project, and burn out or leave at the first better offer.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for energy and utilities, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
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.
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 solar EPC companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A single sheet on who is posted where, for how long, with what travel, stay and food support.
What this coversHideA single sheet on who is posted where, for how long, with what travel, stay and food support. Pay benchmarks show what nearby companies offer.
Name, course, date taken and date due, kept by one person and reviewed monthly before sites mobilise.
What this coversHideName, course, date taken and date due, kept by one person and reviewed monthly before sites mobilise. Health and safety work builds the habit around it.
A rolling view of who finishes when and who starts next, so postings are announced early.
What this coversHideA rolling view of who finishes when and who starts next, so postings are announced early. The workforce plan is built from it.
What the company expects at induction, safety briefing, attendance and conduct before a gang starts on site.
What this coversHideWhat the company expects at induction, safety briefing, attendance and conduct before a gang starts on site.
Clear steps from graduate trainee to project manager, with what each step needs, so people see a future beyond the current plant.
What this coversHideClear steps from graduate trainee to project manager, with what each step needs, so people see a future beyond the current plant.
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.
Rolling project and posting plans so engineers know their next site before the current one closes.
Induction, card tracking and site briefing routines for people working at height and near live equipment.
Site allowance and grade structures set against what comparable EPC companies offer.
Site attendance, rotation and leave rules that work on remote projects.
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 energy and utilities, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Engineers, technicians and operators leave energy and utilities firms for reasons that differ by project and plant. How to listen, ask better questions and act.
6 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 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 to design incentives for operators, setters and inspectors in fastener, gear, spring and valve units so that accepted lots, not piece counts, earn the bonus.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Tell them the next posting early, offer a clear grade step and keep allowances fair and written. Engineers usually leave because the next project is a rumour, not because the current one is hard.
It depends on your project size and mix. Whichever you choose, the induction, safety briefing and attendance standard should be the same, so the plant is built the same way by every gang.
Publish one rule based on distance, stay arrangements and role, and apply it the same way. Exceptions get written down with a reason. People accept a rule they can read far more easily than a favour.
At least a joining file, the safety training and card dates, posting history and attendance. Keep them where the head office can find them quickly, whatever site the person is on.
Yes. Four or five steps from trainee to project manager are enough, with short notes on what each needs. It lets a young engineer see what a good two years would earn.
First we would list your live projects against the people posted to them, check card dates and read your allowance practice. A posting and allowance rule with a certificate register is a natural first job, and scope goes into writing for you to accept or change.
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