Flexible Employers for Willing Workers - Civil Engineering Technician II Building & Earth Employee Review

4.0
Jan 20, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I've worked out of the Huntsville office for the past two years. The management for my office has been incredibly flexible and understanding. They've given me plenty of hours and worked around my class schedule. I get paid holidays and vacation. Building and Earth does encourage the development of its employees. There are significant bonuses attached to getting applicable certifications, but they're not going to hold your hand in getting them. You'll have to study on your own, but they pay for you to take the test, and they pay you a bonus if you pass. At least in the Huntsville office, everyone is friendly enough. If you have a question, there's always someone available to sort things out. Overall, the Huntsville office management is very pleasant to work for, especially considering the unpleasantness of the industry.

Cons

Most cons I've seen posted for B&E are indictments of the industry rather than the company. Yes, they're going to want you to travel. Yes, they're going to want you to work rough hours. But construction doesn't always occur from 9 to 5 in your back yard. That said, Building and Earth does have some flaws in the way it schedules work. They've got a "do whatever the client asks" mentality which often translates into last minute scrambles and long days for techs. But if you're like me and want the hours, it's not really that bad. Building and Earth doesn't always hire experienced or reliable people. As a result, you'll have to earn the trust of management. There are checks in place to ensure you're honest and thorough, but so long as you just do your job, this is, again, not an issue. The final, largest issue I see at B&E is a general deflection of responsibility. If something bad happens, management gets a call from the client, management deflects to the engineers, then the engineers deflect to the techs and the techs catch the end of it, regardless of their roll in it. The company functions as a large conglomeration of individuals rather than a team. Even if a problem occurs because 4 different levels of employees made a mistake, the lowest level's going to take the blame for everything. This creates a system wherein the lowest level is functionally disposable. To compensate for the money they're bleeding to employee turnover, B&E has taken to hiring low cost techs. At least from my perspective, corporate seems to have a mentality of, "don't invest too much in techs because they'll be gone before the investment pays off" but this mentality is the root cause of the employee turnover. But again, that's probably an industry wide problem for low wage employees.

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Building & Earth Response
8y
Hello! Thanks for the feedback. We make every effort to listen to all comments and reviews, and to adjust our future business strategy with those in mind. We value our employees and want to instill an attitude of ambition and teamwork in our company culture. We would love to discuss your experience with the company further, and learn more about how you think we can improve our employee onboarding and retaining processes. Please feel free to contact a member of our HR team or you may also submit your comments using our contact us form: http://www.buildingandearth.com/customer-service/. We look forward to hearing from you.

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