Hensel Phelps reviews

The hours are insanity! 12+ hour workdays and weekend work are standard. There is a frighteningly high number of divorced employees or those with strained marriages (especially amongst the veteran employees or "gold hats" as HP calls an employee with 5+ years of service). Kiss your personal life, hobbies, friends, relationships, or other non-work related interest good bye as they are inferior to the company agenda. Basically, the culture revolves around making work and HP your life - not good for anybody in the long run. *I would like to note that I was on an exceptionally bad project (within the HP Northern California District) with alot of personell issues and mis-management - which is why I threw in the towel after only a year. I have heard some very good things about this company from persons who worked in other districts such as the Mid-Atlantic and Plains.

I can only speak from my limited perspective at the project site I was assigned. I was a 'traditional hire', which is generally regarded as the people being groomed to lead the company, fresh out of college and ready to be trained. This is a good system in theory as it makes for an organically grown and stable company; however, I was very disappointed with the companies efforts to fully capitalize on my knowledge and their lack of interest in my preferred career path. As a construction engineering graduate with my EIT certification, I found myself operating a wet-vac and putting nuts on bolts. I informed my direct supervisor that I would prefer the office route through project management, but they insisted on forcing me through the field route which I accepted for over one year. During this time it became apparent to me that in order to stay employed with this company, you must be willing to relocate constantly and live to work (even if there is nothing to do- they seem to think presence=productivity, which was not the case). Both of these requirements make having a personal life nearly impossible which was the deal breaker for me.