CH2M HILL Reviews

Pros

Great benefits, 401k match, affordable health insurance, choose of different health insurances, descent pay, knowledgeable co-workers. Great place to work and expand your career. Great communication from upper management. Very versatile types of work. Great PTO program.

Cons

Tight with raises, even when out preform all your co-workers. Reward program is lacking for hourly employees. Constant worry over length of employment due to types of contacts working on.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve the continuing education program. People can't get new degrees without taking loans to pay for the tuition. Also re-work the yearend review process, does it really take 5 months to give out a 3% raise?

Pros

Many outstanding technologists and project managers, some very enjoyable clients (EPA in particular), interesting large projects.

Cons

Not many downsides when I started about 10 years ago, but even before the economic downturn, senior management began centralizing control in the hands of a very few managers. Now a supervisor can't approve a $100 purchase for required equipment without getting high-level approval. Furthermore, with the growth of the past 10 years, the bureaucracies in Health & Safety, HR, and IT have gotten out of control, to the point where they forget that their job is to support our primary mission of engineering, construction, and planning. Finally, the contradictory messages ranging from "last year was our best ever, thanks!" to "we absolutely need to reduce overhead costs, so raises are small again and you need to be 100% billable" (resulting in limited training and management budgets) are getting absurd.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't pay senior people in Denver (HQ) high salaries to sit on an overhead budget churning out new policies and directives, while limiting the ability of the people actually bringing in the revenue and working with clients to do their jobs. In fact, those staff that are actually billable know best how to get work done.

Instead of having Health and Safety or HR make policies that threaten engineers with termination if they fail to "respect" those policies, require the H&S and HR people to be 90% billable and work for the project managers, developing H&S plans, filling out the endless field forms, and finding quality staff to work the projects.

Return to the limited executive bonuses of our former leaders, especially when you're VPs are harping on us about the need to limit what little overhead budgets we actually have at the office level. In these difficult financial times, and considering our selling point as an employee-owned company, why should a few executives be taking credit for, and 100 times the pay of, our technologists and PMs that are actually earning that revenue???

Pros

Very flexible work schedule, environmentally conscience, great offices

Cons

Pay compensation discrepancies between divisions, Position levels seem based on time experience only

Pros

Competitive pay
Decent benefits
Some good employees
Concerned about safety
When I needed personal time off they allowed it. They also are understanding of missed flights etc, as long as it doesn't happen on a regular basis.

Cons

Lied about pay
HR is a joke
Extreme favoritism
Hard to get recognition for a job well down
Lots of office gossip
I have 7 bosses - 6 of which are unnecessary
Hard to move up unless you are friendly with the hirer - then it's easy

Advice to Senior Management

Needs some restructuring as well as monetary incentives for a great job or for completing a hard job on time.

Pros

Very flexible work environment
Very bright, hard working colleagues
Collegial and respectful work environment
Management provides frequent communication regarding strategy, changes, etc.
Solid overall corporate culture of respect, integrity, etc.
Senior leadership are very accessible
Very rare to encounter someone who is a real jerk - they don't tend to stick around long
Good brand - looks good on your resume

Cons

Overall corporate culture is often not reflected in local offices (management says one thing, local senior staff do another)
Performance review process (aka PEP) is opaque, gossipy, subjective, time consuming, and underfunded (company provides budget for about 20% of actual effort required to complete reviews). And, in the end, pretty much everybody gets the same rating (5% needs improvement, 75% performing, 20% outstanding).
Path for advancement is unclear - senior staff in local offices don't follow corporate position descriptions, guidelines for promotion, etc. Based more on "that's how we do things around here"...
Senior staff out of touch with issues/challenges facing junior staff and there are no mid-level staff to provide a bridge between generations
Most junior/mid-level staff leave once they realize they can get paid more to do less at a client organization
Pretty much the only way to share in the success of the firm is through stock price appreciation - which means that in addition to working hard, you also have to loan the firm your money to get any piece of the profits (no real bonuses unless you're way high on the food chain)
Firm spends an average of only $150 per year per employee for spot bonus program (Reward and Recognition)
Constant reorganization (at least 1-2 times/year)
Health insurance premiums have increased avg of 10-15% per year for last 4 years
Billing rates have gone up 4-5%/year for last 4 years, while salary increases have lagged (2-3%/year)
Lion's share of profits are used to buy back the company every quarter since employees are selling more stock than they are buying (many of the old-timers were given huge stock bonuses in the early days)
No general purpose overhead number - if you come up light on work, you will have to use your PTO to fill in your time sheet (must have 80 chargeable hours every two weeks)
Corporate HR fails to address difficult issues properly - too many fluff emails that breed cynicism
Spent 25-50% of my PTO in bits in pieces due to workload lightness during first 2 years with the company
Corporate-level management is increasingly hired from the outside and unfamiliar with the CH2M Hill way
Too much fluff overall coming from corporate these days

Advice to Senior Management

Junior and mid-level staff are getting ready to bolt from the company en masse as soon as the economy rebounds. Quit being stingy with salary increases for junior/mid-level staff. Instead, you need to start making true cuts to overhead budgets for management at the regional level and above (instead of just reshuffling), even if that means old timers who have been around for a along time but who no longer contribute value that is equal to their salary. Invest more money in front line leadership - OLs (local supervisors) do not have the resources to do their job properly.

Pros

Diverse projects
Internally some great people at your peer level or below to work with.
Good stock purchase program after one year employment.

Cons

Respect is often noted as key value, but rarely given.
Money and winning the work trumps everything else.
VP's not expected to adhere to core company values, as long as they keep winning the work, they can treat subordianates any way they want.
Bonuses kept at very high managment levels, even Sr. Managers who consistently work 50+ hours weeks may not see anything.
Human Resources has become a joke!

Advice to Senior Management

Start walking the talk! No more lip service, treat all staff with dignity and respect, even when they are following corporate policy and it effects us winning work.

Pros

Cool work across the globe.
The team I work with are great professional employees who do great work.

Cons

This used to be a great place to work. Ralph P was about mentoring and thrived on the success of others. Now we have people at the top that only think of themselves. They have no idea what the "yellow book" is or care to embrace it. In my time at CH2Mhill I have never heard this many people talk about leaving the company. It is a real shame to see the culture change as fast as it has with Lee and Jackie involved.

Advice to Senior Management

Lee may want to hear from the employees as to why CH2Mhill did not make the best place to work as it has in the past. The people he has brought into the company only care about the themselves. Very disappointing from a long term employee. When the President of a division has to take credit for work that has been done by others.....what message does that send to employees? When stock is given mostly to the presidents at the top...what message does that send to employees? Employee owned company.....you used to be able to say that and mean it.

Pros

In most cases working at CH2M HILL allows for a good work/life balance, fun, challenging projects, excellent mentoring, and decent pay

Cons

It may take a while to receive well deserved promotions/raises, especially since the economic nose dive a few years ago.

Pros

40-45 hour work week, decent 401k, plus 2% yearly as stock, 100% employee owned with internal market, diverse company with regards to work type makes it easy to go somewhere else and do something different (took me 4 days to transfer, and I've seen multiple employees take 6 months assignments), senior management does a very good job of keeping you informed of business direction and goals, senior management is approachable (I've had a beer with the CEO).

The work has the potential to be very diverse, and, should you desire for a change of pace/venue/project, it is very easy to effect this change.

Cons are not unique to CH2M HILL. They can be found at all EPC companies.

Cons

Absolutely no mid-level (5-12 years of experience anywhere. Company consists of junior folks, and senior folks. As such, the path for progression from junior to senior is not particularily laid out. Senior folks who, in part, are responsible for this career development, do not and cannot actively lay out a path.

Engineers, in particular, who worked for the client for some number of years are valued much higher than employees who had not. I.e. someone with 10 years experience, 5 for CH2M and 5 for a client is paid 20% more than someone with 10 years experience working for CH2M HILL. The expensive person does not add more value, and in many cases could be argued to add less.

As such, most junior people I know eventually quit to work for the client for 5-10 years, then come back.

Overhead costs can be high and this limits company profit. You may have 98% billable time, yet see averages of "75%" amongst the company. Making you wonder where the overhead is, since you flat out don't see it (almost all employees you meet will be billable).

Poor performers are often not dealt with expediently and linger in the system until such time that work gets low, then they may or may not be laid off first. However, if work is going strong for 4 years, you may have to deal with poorly performing coworkers for 4 years since even the poor performers make the company money. Differences in employee productivity can easily be 5:1 between the Jedis and the non Jedis. There is however, no difference in pay.

Advice to Senior Management

Mr. McIntire, I think you're a phenominal CEO. Your executive team is very good at keeping us minions in the loop and sharing our goals and performance against those goals. I have to warn you that every, and I do mean every junior engineer (less than 5 years experience) who is good at their job (the Jedis) that I personally know, myself included, is planning on quitting CH2M HILL in the next 2-3 years. We will likely go work for the client, or go work for another EPC firm who is in a hiring binge (easy to extract 10% more money).

The reasons for this are: pay (client pay is substantially higher (through the bonus system), people with client exp get paid more to return as senior folk, and when swapping between EPC companies who are desperate to hire, getting a 10% raise is cake), no clear path for transition from junior to senior, and lastly, poor performing employees are not dealt with and can be paid nearly the same as Jedi employees.

Often times you have E3's being billed to clients as E5's, and E6's doing the exact same work an E2 right next to them is also doing, at 3x the cost. This is great for the E6, but the E2 can only do that for so long before asking what gives.

I don't think this is your fault, but, you need to fix it. Or soon you will have senior folk retiring and will have absolutely NO mid-level jedis to replace them. You will have to entice them to return from your clients and competitors. Clients and competitors who are also simultaneously seeing their senior folk retire and are probably throwing large sums of cash at the employees you want to hire.

A clear path from E2/E3 to E5/E6 with increasing responsibility and an increased cleanout of poor performers would be a wonderful start.

Pros

Salary and benefits are excellent. As long as you're billable, you have a relatively easy day-to-day job. There are friendly co-workers.

Cons

Company policies toward working from home and tuition reimburesement are quite good, but approvals can be nearly impossible to get even though it's theoretically a workplace benefit. There is no support for workplace skills development - you have what you had when you started the job (good luck getting training approved, especially if it involves a cost and/or travel). There is no useful communication from management, and the company randomly reorganizes on a quarterly basis. There is some amount of "work hoarding" among employees, given that billable targets increase each year to meet company financial targets, and this leads to "factions" (cliques) among work groups. It can be quite difficult, or nearly impossible, to get engaged in work that matches your skills and interests.

Advice to Senior Management

Years of budget cutting have taken its toll on employee morale. Face-to-face networking is important, but if employees are tucked away into corners with no opportunity to meet in professional or social corporate events, then employees will grow unhappy.