A structural steel fabricator marks, cuts, fits and welds beams, columns and trusses in a yard, then sends erection crews to bolt them up on site. Both yard and site skills are scarce.
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Share your requirementsA structural steel fabricator turns sections and plate into beams, columns, trusses, purlins, platforms and mezzanines to a contractor's drawing. The yard runs marking, sawing, drilling, fit-up, welding, shot blasting and painting, with overhead cranes lifting heavy members. Finished pieces go by truck, and erection crews bolt or weld them at height. Everything follows the project programme: a site idle for lack of steel pushes the yard into night work. Drawings carry hundreds of marks, and a misplaced hole is found only when the beam is lifted. Fitters, welders and riggers have different skills, and the best foremen understand yard and site both. 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 structural steel fabricators. 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.
Erection hands live in camps for weeks while yard staff go home nightly, and each side thinks the other has the better deal.
A bolt hole out of position is found with the beam in the air, days are lost, and yard, detailer and fitter all point elsewhere.
A fall, a swinging load or a bad sling hitch can maim, and what happens on a distant site is harder to see than in the yard.
One trusted rigger signals every pick, and when the rigger is absent the yard and the site both stop.
Late fixing of the site date leaves less fabrication time, so the same welders and fitters work long hours and tire.
They now have to roster gangs, read the programme and handle the client engineer, with no training for any of it.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Health, Safety and Wellbeing; Employee Relations; Learning and Development. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Two routes, one for complaints, one for conduct, kept separate.
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.
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 structural steel fabricators business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Spell out how long a crew stays, rest days, travel and camp allowances, and apply it the same way to all.
Spell out how long a crew stays, rest days, travel and camp allowances, and apply it the same way to all. See the attendance, shift and leave process.
A marked list of hole pitches, lengths and piece marks checked against the drawing, with a signature.
A marked list of hole pitches, lengths and piece marks checked against the drawing, with a signature. Walk each site misfit back through the yard with those who made it.
Harness use, hand signals, lift exclusion zones and tool tethering, with a sign-off for each worker before first site day.
Harness use, hand signals, lift exclusion zones and tool tethering, with a sign-off for each worker before first site day. See workplace health, safety and wellbeing.
Pick two helpers a year, set supervised lifts in stages and sign off each.
Pick two helpers a year, set supervised lifts in stages and sign off each. The learning and development process gives a frame.
Short sessions on gang planning, giving instructions and settling arguments at site.
Short sessions on gang planning, giving instructions and settling arguments at site. See leadership and people management.
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.
Habits for working at height, rigging and lifting, taught in the yard before they are needed on site.
Rotation, rest and leave rules that are fair to crews who spend weeks away.
Sessions that get foremen ready to plan gangs, instruct and settle disputes on site.
A staged route to grow riggers and fitters from your own helpers.
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 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
An employee brings you a complaint about their supervisor. What happens next should not depend on who is in the room. A grievance procedure a small company can actually run.
8 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.
Fix the rotation, rest days and allowances in writing, visit the camp, and check the food and bunks. Crews leave when they feel forgotten.
Add a signed dispatch check against the drawing and review each misfit with the people who made it. Note the cause every time and look for repeats.
Harness and lanyard use, rigging signals, exclusion zones under lifts and the site rules, signed off before anyone climbs. Repeat it on a set cycle and keep the record.
Pick dependable helpers, move them through supervised lifts in steps and sign off each step. Show the extra skill in their pay.
Look beyond welding or fitting skill to how the person deals with people. Let them deputise first, give training, and accept that some strong fitters prefer not to lead.
We would study how crews are posted to site, pull out recent misfit reports and read your height and rigging training records. A good first job is a posting policy with a dispatch check. Scope is settled in writing after we talk.
All 8 business types in sheet metal and fabrication · 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.
