Environmental Science & Engineering - www.esemag.com - November 2003
Comments? send them to the editor.
The ethics of body snatching
By Bill De Angelis, P.Eng., MBA,
Vice President, AWS Engineers & Planners
The municipal
consulting
industry
seems to be
in the midst of a
feeding frenzy.
Headhunters busy at
work luring staff from one firm to
another. Local newspapers full of
advertisements for skilled technical
staff. Stampedes from municipalities.
Vacancies all over. Musical chairs in
the engineering fraternity; resumes
and references flying in all directions.
Intellectual services have never been
in greater demand in the Ontario marketplace,
and never has there been such
a shortage. How have we gotten ourselves
into this situation, and more
importantly, is there a way out?
Getting in was easy. Hire fewer new
graduate engineers, work intermediate
and senior staff harder, don’t mentor
and don’t formalize succession planning
processes. Implement in-house
programs to do more with less. Throw
in a spate of retirements from municipalities
and movement begins to occur
from the consulting sector to the public
sector to fill the voids. This is not a
new phenomenon, but it is certainly
now proceeding with greater speed
than many of us have observed in the
past twenty years.
Certainly in the minds of the consulting
contingent, short-term requirements
for staff take precedence over
strategic hiring and training initiatives;
the work is here today, and we need
people who can step up to the plate
today to accomplish that work efficiently,
to achieve profitability targets
necessary to keep our firms afloat. In many
cases we are not planning for our longterm
survival as consulting engineers.
Our goal should be to develop a culture
of sustainability within our own
sector, and to achieve that end we must
look both near and far at the same time.
Wholesale exchanges of staff are not
the answer. How can we get out of this
situation?
Commitment: Change the way we
think about employees. Hire staff and
show a commitment to them. In many
cases that commitment will be
returned.
Employment Contracts: Guarantee
an engineer employment for a certain
period, and, in return, assist with training
and mentoring.
New Canadian Engineers: We are
seeing changes within our regulatory
bodies that are making it easier for
new Canadian engineers to be able to
practice while gaining experience.
Take the initiative to tap into this available
resource pool.
Develop University Links: Commit
to hiring a certain number of undergraduate
students each term. Often
that commitment is returned to the
company after graduation, in the form
of an acclimatized young engineer.
Share Engineering Staff: In many
cases, we compete for the same assignments.
Depending on workloads, staff
might be “loaned at a cost” to competitors
in cases where workload and
staffing levels do not mix. In such a
scenario both firms win; the busier
firm can ramp up for an assignment
without increasing its base complement,
and the less busy firm can maintain
its base complement without having
to reduce staff.
Offer Competitive Salaries and
Benefits: Ensure that staff are remunerated
fairly for their work. If we are
consistent in pay schemes, then staff
will often stay put. However, company
culture also plays a part in staff retention,
in that the work environment
must be conducive to learning, sharing
and professional development.
Provide Public Sector Talent Pool:
Our main goal is to develop a framework
that will ensure our survival as a
provider of consulting services; however,
part of our responsibility should
be to act as a training ground for technical
engineers that will migrate to the
public sector. This is not necessarily a
bad thing; the experience gained working
in the consulting world assists
municipal engineers in achieving their
capital program goals.
At the end of the day, the more
effective a municipality is at initiating
and managing capital projects, the
greater the amount of work that flows
to the consulting sector.
See our home page on how to order your subscription. We regret we can
only accept orders from Canada and the United States.
