Structural and civil engineering practices design foundations, frames and roads, and visit sites to check work. Their people split time between desks and mud, and their sign-off carries real responsibility for safety.
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Share your requirementsA structural and civil engineering practice prepares calculations and drawings for buildings, bridges, roads, drains and foundations, and inspects work on site. The principal engineer signs the designs, senior engineers review them, design engineers run analysis software and prepare calculations, draughtspersons produce drawings and details, and site engineers visit projects to check reinforcement, concrete and alignment. Clients include builders, architects and owners who change plans late. Deadlines for drawings are set by site progress, and a delay at the desk stops a gang on site. Software skills matter, and licences are costly. Errors can be serious, so checking is vital but often squeezed. Knowledge of local soil, codes and contractors grows over years. See also HR for structural consultants.
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 and civil engineers. 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.
A site waits for a drawing, and the checking step is cut to save a day.
An architect moves a column or a wall, and calculations and drawings are redone without extra time.
The principal signs everything, and every drawing waits for that diary.
Engineers split between site and office, and neither gets full attention.
One engineer knows the analysis tool well, and others copy settings without understanding them.
A site uses an old revision, and the cost shows up as rework or worse.
They produce calculations from a desk and have little exposure to site, so learning is slow.
Builders and large firms offer higher pay and steadier hours.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Operations and Governance; Learning and Development; Health, Safety and Wellbeing. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
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.
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.
The pieces a structural and civil engineers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Each drawing drafted, checked and approved by different people, with a revision log and a distribution list.
Each drawing drafted, checked and approved by different people, with a revision log and a distribution list. Keep it in documentation.
Checklists by structure type and two or three trained reviewers, so the principal looks at the hardest cases.
Checklists by structure type and two or three trained reviewers, so the principal looks at the hardest cases.
Late changes recorded, priced and given time, so redesign is visible work.
Late changes recorded, priced and given time, so redesign is visible work.
A weekly plan showing who is on site, who is at the desk and who covers.
A weekly plan showing who is on site, who is at the desk and who covers. Use attendance and leave rules.
Short sessions on analysis tools, codes and checks, and site rotations for juniors.
Short sessions on analysis tools, codes and checks, and site rotations for juniors. See learning plans.
Helmets, shoes and a named contact for every visit.
Helmets, shoes and a named contact for every visit. See health and safety.
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.
Issue procedures and role descriptions that keep checking real.
Cover between site visits and desk deadlines.
Software and site rotations for juniors.
Briefings and gear for engineers 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 professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
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Every growing company reaches a point where the founder approving everything stops being speed and starts being the bottleneck. Twelve signs it has happened, and what to fix first.
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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.
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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 articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Make it a fixed step, give the checker authority to hold a drawing and plan time for it. A rule that is optional is skipped under pressure.
Record every change, tell the client what it costs in time and fees, and issue revised drawings clearly. Hidden changes become free work.
Write checklists, train senior engineers and let the principal review exceptions. The checklist is as important as the person.
Rotate them to site, pair them with a senior and discuss failures and near misses. Learning grows with sight of real work.
Use a revision log, a distribution list and a rule that old copies are withdrawn. Confirm professional duties with a qualified professional.
How drawings are checked and issued, who signs, how site and desk time are split and why engineers leave. An issue procedure, a reviewer plan or a junior rotation is a likely start. Scope, timing and fees are put in writing after that talk.
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