Pros
-Excellent place to do a summer/internship uni break job in, lots of fieldwork -An 'ok' place to start a short term graduate job in (but after 6 months you won't see do anything new or be developed further) - A slow predictable cushy PM job if you can handle the snails pace -A good place to retire in as a specialist and just want to review reports - lots of field work for juniors to get out of office and meet clients -the clients are friendly and generally good to deal with - offices around the country -will pay for a Masters Degree with a return of service/years etc, some good people who are patient with juniors etc. -Potential to go a long with this company if you are prepared to wait, a long time...
Cons
- Within a few months I had been exposed to everything that DP would offer to a project manager/junior specialist for the next few years - My opinion and observations were that DP facilitated a classist culture of associate/shareholder vs. regular salary employee - I was once told that by an associate that 'everyone here who isnt a shareholder is essentially is an expense to the shareholders', unreal! - Geotech and Enviro staff were not integrated to an optimal level - huge disconnect which results in incredible inefficiency and lost opportunity for upskilling of staff - i observed a large turnover of grad/PM staff - I was given no clear KPIs, no meaningful performance review, no clear path to promotion or further responsibility - all resulted in a dilution of purpose/standards amongst the staff -Middle Management took little interest in pragmatically involving PMs in specialist projects/site inspections, limited opportunities for initiative afforded to PMs/junior staff other than fieldwork, excel spreadsheets and basic copy/paste report writing - communication in my dept was primarily email even though most sat within 3m of each other, pretty bleak... - every was expense on a project/item was viewed as a direct assault on the profitability of the company/sharehold, eg. $10 broadbrimmed hat for fieldwork 40 deg summer days resulted in a quizzing from an associate why the company had to pay for that bit of PPE for site work...