quantity surveyor

civil engineer

engineer

project manager

site engineer

Balfour Beatty

Currently, a typical day involves reviewing client comments and feedback regarding project design and project works, and communicating directly with the client and their representatives to find a solution/answer to the question or query posed. This also involves adapting project commissioning documentation, project O&M manuals, and amending project procedures and specifications to correspond with As-Built requirements of the project.

I have learned and developed as an engineer to communicate with clients, their representatives and to report to senior management on a daily basis. I have developed my computer literacy in both Microsoft Office, CMPic cable software, Windchill 3D Visualisation, AutoCAD, AmTech, and DIALux lighting design software. These have been mainly project specific, however, this has allowed me to grasp and develop the basics of each piece of software and apply this when required.

I communicate with several levels of management on a daily basis, ranging from Senior Engineers, to Regional Directors. This involves reporting, face to face meetings, and assisting with client meetings and tendering activities.

I enjoy working within a team environment, but also enjoy working as an individual. I feel that I am approachable and easy to talk to when my co-workers require my assistance and I actively share knowledge and experiences whenever they ask or require help. I will openly seek assistance from my senior colleagues when required and feel that I am a good team player within the department.

The hardest part of my job is to find information from numerous sources; subcontractors, project site teams and clients, as each has their own way of filing, archiving and sharing information on project related documentation. I try to find this information by constantly communicating with these sources, and searching several archives and filing resources to answer questions and queries from the client.

I enjoy working as part of a team and within a team environment. I also enjoy the potential diversities which I have encountered within the project team, which has allowed me exposure of different types of projects, sites and engineering disciplines.

I currently schedule a team of engineers covering the North of England including Ireland. Working within a reactive and fast paced office environment I ensure that engineers are scheduled work to meet target SLA’s. Using effective time management and prioritization, I am able to schedule workloads in accordance with varied SLA’s, including re-arranging the engineers PDA/Diary, which can be quite difficult dependant on reasons for reschedule. This includes both reactive based works and also preventative planned maintenance. I also liaise daily with sub contractors if a job cannot be completed by our own engineers, whilst also chasing for updates and any recommendations. This contact is via telephone, fax and email to which a great relationship and rapport is held with each and every client, engineer, manager, supervisor and sub contractor, whilst working as part of a very busy team in a new and demanding department. This excellent relationship ensures that I find this part of the job most enojoyable, as well as, undertaking additional responsibilities to that above my current role which includes management of 2 sub-contractors for the nationwide coverage, the management of 3 mailboxes and also motivation and teambuilding for the team.
I ensure the weekly rota is displayed in a prominent view and that all Out Of Ours Rotas are also displayed prominently. This additional responsibility has enabled me to become one of two succession planners within the business, which has included selection by senior management to move departments to develop and share the knowledge base I have built during my previous role.

Firstly I'm not going to write a tonne of negative stuff about Balfour Beatty. They are of course a HUGE company with some many divisions and sub-divisions. I was delighted when I received my offer from Balfour, I had the idea I wanted to work for a massive company and get involved in some amazing projects. 

Unfortunately my experience wasn't at all what I was expecting and I found the work culture there to be a bit toxic at times, and felt my line manager had little respect for staff and despite being obviously good at his job had poor team management skills. From day 1 it was like being in school, everyone in silence grinding away. Of course it is a place of work but for me work doesn't have to be like this all the time, try and create a better atmosphere to work in than some 90s style office where no one talks. The work/life balance was horrible. Even coming into work early on a Friday to leave a bit before 5 (to travel back home for the weekend) was not an option. I left 30 minutes early one Friday (despite coming in 1hr 15 early) and it was an issue for my line manager, who was basically just too controlling. I was hired into an assistant role but ended up taking a lot more responsibility, which is fine but I didn't receive any thanks or help from management. A colleague took some time off after his Dad had passed away. He was given no slack with our manager who basically came down on him like a ton of bricks at a progress meeting, it was quite frankly tyrannical and disgusting from a manager. 

As I have said my bad experience is probably uncommon and I am sure that the majority of employees would give great feedback. The pay/benefits are great and that was the only thing keeping me going past 1 month.

On a typical day, depending on my location, once the team had arrived my direct reports would review the following:
Safety performance on the shifts worked and review any inspections that had taken place and try to seek any improvement.
Review the previous days/nights progress relating to planned activities and report on any slippage that might of occurred and put into place a recovery plan. Up-date programmes according on all projects.
Review the next planned works, to check all resource is the correct resource, check all materials are available and all plant is secured and ready.
Balfour Beatty are going through a transition at present and there is a lot of turnover of Management, Commercial, Planning & HSQE staff, in general all seemed competent within their chosen sectors. Due to my military career, I have found that I can get the best motivation from my teams and help develop teamwork and the desire to promote a good working environment.
One of the hardest part of my position is trying to retain staff, the rail industry at times is very demanding and staff are quite willing to move on to easily. Also, managing the client takes a big part in this
The most enjoyable parts of my position are delivering projects and the client accepts all the hard work that is being put in. Another enjoyable part is developing "Teams" getting all the team pulling in the same direction, I very muck like the way I can develop PM's, CM's, Site Managers and Site Agents to progress their careers further and with a little tuition and advise make them look better with the client and Company Peers alike.

After years of cronyism, ridiculously high day rates for contractors, disproportionately large project teams with nobody actually "on the ground" and a couple of good but very overworked and underpaid people propping up entire departments, there has been a huge restructure, and management (perhaps understandably) now like to "rule with an iron fist" and make people feel threatened into thinking that their jobs are on the line so they work harder.

People are scared to approach anyone or ask questions for fear of losing their jobs. Communication is very poor and restructures are constant, nobody knows what is going on and that's the way management like it. Flexible working is frowned upon - one manager for example got a secretary to record the times people arrived into work on a spreadsheet.

Any proper processes (particularly in IT) are non existent but nobody seems to care - management's solution is to just fire people rather than fix problems at the source. Service desk are very stressed out due to poor decisions made by management, handover not being done from legacy IT teams, contracted project teams worrying about getting things done on time rather properly and incompetent vendors. This very hostile environment makes for a very high turnover as talented people leave.

However there are still a couple of decent people left who are committed to turning it around. So if you really want a big challenge it might be the place for you.

Western Alliance Contract – Balfour Beatty Rail (Swindon and Exeter)

Although the Western Alliance contract is described as an alliance, my experience was that it often felt highly adversarial. During my time working for Balfour Beatty Rail on the contract in Swindon and Exeter, I found the culture within the commercial team to be challenging. Behaviours such as copying large numbers of people into emails to undermine or embarrass colleagues, talking negatively about team members behind their backs, and a lack of constructive collaboration seemed to be commonplace.

The working relationship between Balfour Beatty and Network Rail in Swindon also appeared strained. From my perspective, frequent reorganisations and ongoing redundancy programmes at Network Rail and very high turnover of Staff with Balfour Beatty, created an environment of uncertainty, which seemed to encourage defensive behaviours rather than cooperation within the team.

It is worth saying that most of the colleagues I worked with were professional and supportive. My concerns were less about the individuals doing the day-to-day work and more about the way the teams were managed and structured which brought out the very worst in people.  In my experience, the management approach fostered hostility and mistrust , both within Balfour Beatty and towards Network Rail

A typical day at work for me has been getting the offices polished, hoovering, emptying bins and making there desks tidy ready for my co-workers and manages to start there very busy days. Then going down to clean the work-mens canteen, drying room and all toilets. I would have to say there wasn't an easy part to this job as like the cleaning jobs i have done in the past, Because no sooner than you clean an area from dust and mud, It was back again, being a building site there wasn't much job satisfaction in that aspect. But having said that i was always kept busy, And thats why i loved the my job. And unlike cleaning jobs i have done in the past, I had to sit my cscs course and heath and safety. learn about doing risk assessments on cleaning products and work areas. I also had to sit a on line Royal Bank Of Scotland Manual Handling course. The most enjoyable part of the job was meeting and greeting people, being the first person of contact, even before they made there way to the reception. And collecting the lottery from co-workers and manages twice a week and have that responsibility and trust, (not that we ever won that much)!!!. I would say that the most enjoyable part of my job has been reading my references and seeing how much of a good job i did and finding out what my co-workers and manages thought about me..

As part of the ITC Team at Head Office Glasgow my role was to provide prompt 1st and 2nd line support from telephone, intranet helpdesk and email requests.  Call logging average 180+ calls a day. 
Daily Tasks: Active Directory 2003 Administration, Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows 2003 Environment M2273, Active Directory Administration, MS Exchange 2003 Administration, SMS 2003 Administration, XP\Vista Support, Blackberry Enterprise Administration, Cisco Switches, MPLS Layer3 Switching, Routers, TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP LANs\WANs. ADSL Support, BT Mobilexpress, VOIP telephony, Sharepoint Web portal and Administration of sharepoint Services, MS Office 2003\2007\2010, MS Project, MS Visio MS Outlook Configuration, as well as 50 3rd party software apps.
OS experience in supporting windows XP\Vista\ recently Windows7 (pilot scheme) purchase and deploy systems using ghost imaging and current deployment tools to all current system users. Provide Dell warranty support for server workstations and mobile laptops, Support and configure Network printers in large corporation environments.
Asset Management as well as business process management performed daily as part of the ITIL environment.
Onyx provided outsourced 1st Line support services for Balfour Beatty Head Office Glasgow.
Achievements: Achieved highest call closure rate 350 calls in one month.
Safety award 2 weeks after joining the business.

I worked here for 3 years. It all started well, I was promised progression, training and good experience. They delivered on none. In every single PDR I scored top marks. As a result I was approached with an offer of a pay rise and promotion.  Even though I recieved a promotion letter the company back tracked and said it would be delayed 8 months and would not be back paid. This came after stringing me along for 4 months.  turns out they only give out a promotion if you threaten to resign.  I don't do threats so I just resigned. Learned from a director later that the group MD had made a decision that no pay rises or promotions would be made in that year across the U.K. Business. Only flight risks would be considered. So the whole code of conduct seamed only to apply to the lower ranking staff. Pretty sure the policy stated "All of our decisions about recruitment, hiring, compensation, development and promotion must be made solely on the basis of ability, skills, experience, behaviour, performance and potential to do the job."
Not sure where group MD blanket bans comes into that?
To top it off I was treated disgustingly when I raised my concerns on there actions and pretty much told to like it or lump it.

In summary they do not practice what they preach. Maybe they would be more successful if they actually did.

I have worked for balfourbeatty workplace, now Cofely workplace for 12 years.
i started as a security officer working behind the reception at archer house, the Inland revenue office in stockport.I also spent 9 months working at the H.M.R.C Trinity bridge office in Manchester. 
I was then promoted to Security supervisor at archer house, a position i still hold.
i have worked as part of a team involved in the management of this building.. i have carried out various other duties such as laying carpet tiles, desk raises and many other health and safety taskes that are required in a building this size.
I enjoy all aspects of the job, especially dealing with the many members of the H.M.R.C staff both that worked in the building and that came from all over the country to hold meetings and training courses  in our building.
i have had a few trying times with members of the public, but this is to be expected when you work in an enviroment where people are comeing in to an enquiry centre to sort out tax and benefit issues.

i would love to continue in the same type of work enviroment. 
i get on well with people and enjoy working with them.
i have always been very flexible towards work.
To date i have always been healthy, i have only been off sick from work 1 week in the 12 years i have worked for balfour beatty/ cofely workplace

Top Job Titles	Average salary
Quantity surveyor 11 salaries reported	£42,293 per year
Civil engineer 16 salaries reported	£29,576 per year
Engineer 5 salaries reported	£57,600 per year
Project manager 6 salaries reported	£53,833 per year
Site engineer 6 salaries reported	£32,845 per year

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