Battery racks, inverters and cooling go into a container or cabinet, are tested in the yard and then commissioned at the customer's site. The firm runs on systems engineers and travelling crews, not a big assembly floor.
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Share your requirementsAn energy storage system maker builds large battery installations for factories, solar plants and grid users. It buys cells or packs, inverters, cooling and control gear, fits them into a cabinet or container, runs a factory acceptance test in the yard and ships for installation. A project team plans each order, then a commissioning crew visits to connect, configure and hand over. Each order has its own spec, so no two builds match. Integration technicians, electrical fitters and commissioning engineers are few. Crews travel at short notice, and one late site can hold up payment on a whole project. See also HR for energy and utilities.
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.
Technicians build to each project's spec, and without written steps the result depends on who happens to be on the job.
Engineers spend long spells at remote sites, and tiredness and resignations follow.
Engineers with systems design and site hands-on skill are scarce, so the same names are pulled into every project.
When the customer's pad or grid connection slips, the finished system waits in the yard, the team idles, then gets rushed.
Large battery and power systems carry real electrical risk, and a deadline makes skipping an isolation step tempting.
What integration found during the factory test is not always passed on, so the same fault is found twice.
They chase suppliers, drawings and site dates with few tools, and slips surface late.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Retention and Attrition Management; Learning and Development; Health, Safety and Wellbeing. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for energy and utilities, not in general.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
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.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
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 energy storage system makers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A short checklist for each type, updated after every project.
What this coversHideA short checklist for each type, updated after every project. See documentation process.
Limits on days away, rest on return and fair allowances, applied the same way for everyone.
What this coversHideLimits on days away, rest on return and fair allowances, applied the same way for everyone. See attendance, shift and leave.
Send integration technicians to a site as juniors, with a written skill list.
What this coversHideSend integration technicians to a site as juniors, with a written skill list. The learning and development process can shape this.
A short meeting with notes on faults found, settings used and points still open.
What this coversHideA short meeting with notes on faults found, settings used and points still open.
A briefing before each project stage, with isolation checks signed.
What this coversHideA briefing before each project stage, with isolation checks signed. See health, safety and wellbeing.
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 path from integration technician to commissioning engineer.
Written build, test and handover steps that stop knowledge living in heads.
High-voltage briefings and sign-offs under deadline pressure.
Travel and rest rules for crews who spend weeks on site.
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
How to spot an unmanageable workload before it becomes an exit or an error, what to look at, how to talk about it and what to change, without guessing.
5 min readRead article
A calendar of courses, a budget spent by March and no record of what any of it changed. What a learning and development process contains when it starts from need rather than from the catalogue.
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 articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Cap continuous days away, give time off after a trip and recognise skill with a clear grade. Offer a route to a stable role in time.
Keep a base checklist per system type and add project notes. Review it after each project so the base improves.
Grow them inside by rotating good technicians through site work. Hiring them in is slow because few exist.
Make the briefing and isolation sign-off a fixed step nobody can skip, and let the project lead defend it when dates slip.
Plan useful work such as test improvements, training and writing up the build. Do not send the crew home and then rush them later.
How many people can build and commission alone, which site faults the yard could have caught, and how many nights each engineer spends away. A handover routine plus a commissioning skill path is a fair first job. Scope goes into writing before anything starts.
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