Whiting-Turner reviews

Management is very old school- "live to work" went out about 20 years ago. Yes- construction has never been a 9 to 5 job, but when your protocol is inefficient and requires employees to triplicate information in various databases or generate multiple reports on a monthly basis because Sr. management won't look it up in said database, who is left to actually run the construction project we didn't have enough GCs to man in the first place? Efficiency, although preached, is never something the company is aggressive about resolving- especially if there is a cost associated with it. The ability to make quick, efficient decisions doesn't happen- we can build buildings quicker than we can resolve internal inefficiencies. There is a huge gap between levels of PE's to APMs to PM and in the higher PM levels (3+ to senior) as well. We make a better chorus line than a cheerleading pyramid with our hierarchy. Those who work hard and have stuck with the company are pushed to work longer hours, travel (unless you are one of the "lucky ones" who've never travelled for the company), and give up all semblance of a personal life with either no or minimal compensation, bonuses, profit sharing, etc. When it comes to hiring- again- our inability to make quick decisions means we are hiring the "B Team" because the "A Team" has already been scooped up by competitors. We wait too long to hire PEs and then stick them on a project and expect them to run the whole thing their 2nd week of work. We should have been hiring and training them 2 years ago so we could have them ready to work when needed. Quality of some employees is way below par. Throughout the recession, the company declared they "would not layoff any good people", we didn't lay off the bad ones either. Approval for reimbursement of classes, certifications, etc. takes an army. What once was the company standard of training falls by the way side with the cancelled training sessions month after month (although we still use our "monthly training" schpeel as a selling point in presentations). Advocate program has gone by the way side since there were costs associated with it. The focus has become to maintain the relationship, but pretty much at your own cost, unless you fight and make a stink about it. Who has time to fight these smaller battles when your project is a 60 hour a week job plus you're travelling 2 hours to work one way each day and you want to have a personal life? Travel packages for those out of town no longer take care of the employees for their sacrifice. I shouldn't be paying the company to work out of town, nor should it take months to reimburse employees for out of pocket costs associated with a temporary relocation.

There seems to be a challenge to determine who is most valuable to the company. There sometimes can be a disconnect between who has been working there longer and who is performing better.