Partner Engineering and Science Reviews

The company prices and sells their services with an expectation that anything can be done in "two weeks" and hard dates the proposals which is foolish. Often a customer sits on the offer for a day or two, once the offer is signed it can take another day or two before the actual work order got to me and the real window to get the work done was less than 10 days and usually 7 days to schedule the site visit, get travel booked by myself, start due diligence correspondence before flying, get the visit done and often lack adequate info to complete a decent report. I was forced to write reports on the plane just to meet deadlines which really sucks when the passenger on the plane reclines and the laptop is so close that the screen is 10 inches from your face, ridiculous. The job is about due diligence and the support from the company was awful. I had several times when the sales folks from different parts of the country piled on work without any consideration that others had already booked work with me. You have to take the work or be brow beat by your boss who should be the one who stands up for you and helps you get work done right. They expect miracles and won't meet you half way. It's a terrible way to do business because the reviewers spend more time on corrections that would have been addressed properly if the assessors had adequate time in the first place. Capital cost budgets aren't developed properly because if the rush to finish. Customers are under the impression that costs are low because the properties are in good shape but the truth is assessors don't have the time to digest the information. Costs are superficial because the time to investigate is superficial.

They work you like slave and every project you work on is a rush. There is never a break. There is no focus on quality but rather it is all about quantity of work pushed out the door. I came here over another company because they offered me an extra $1500 a year, but if I had known how hard they would work me, I would have taken the other job offer instead. The staff do all the work but the project managers and principals get all the praise, credit and bonuses. But then if anything goes wrong the first person to get blamed is the staff, never the project managers or principals. If you are one of the many principals in this firm you are treated like royality while the staff are treated like 2nd class citizens. The principals even get their own private parties and every year they take a big vacation together which none of the staff are invited to. The worst part is you don't learn anything new at this job, you just learn how to write what is needed to make the client happy no matter how wrong or illegal it is. Partner is who clients go to when they want to make a problem go away. It could be a leaking nuclear plant and partner will find a way to "write it off" or else the principals get chewed out by the clients and lose their big commissions. Then they chew out their project managers, and the project managers chew out the staff. Basically all the money goes to the principals who are all owners run the company and the leftover scraps go to the project managers. The staff get nothing, not even the scraps, just little to no raises, no training, no praise, not even a thank you for working so hard. I have heard several people say the same things in private, but most people kiss butt and pretend to be happy so they can keep their jobs. Bottom line, do your homework and be careful, if you have other job options take them, even if they pay less. Trust me you will regret it otherwise.