CH2M Employee Reviews about "billable"

Pros

Interesting projects, ample technical support, advancement opportunities, flexible schedules.

Cons

Pressure to increase billable percentages and attract clients.

Pros

Could be a good career launching board. IF you can hack not getting paid for your work and are ok with lying about your skill set so that you can get paid. This is a company that relies on nepotism. You need to know somebody to get work (you only get paid for project work btw. (So yeah that amazing database you want to build for the company to make a task 10x more efficient...that'll be on your own time). And in order to get your foot in the door you need to lie about what you are qualified to do. Yes that's right, there are knobs who know nothing wandering out in the bush with electrofishing backpacks and botanical keys calling themselves aquatics technician and botanists when they don't even know a rainbow from a brook trout or a willow from a herb.

Cons

Does not pay employees for the majority of their work. Low emphasis on good quality work. If an employee wants to produce something higher quality and that takes more time, well they won't get paid for that. Also be prepared for bare bones everything. Pencils? Oh, you supply those yourself. Printing? now you have to log into the printer and wait 10 min for a single page of paper. Is that billable? nope, that'll be on your own time. The gist of this is 1. RUN! 2. Don't even think about sending in a resume, worst mistake you'll ever make. 3. Sometimes I think even a place as bad a ghostpine might be better than CH2M.

Pros

The people are great, they know their stuff and are passionate about their career. Lots of opportunities for training, conferences, and inter-company networks for support. The location is right off I-25 and C-470 so it's easy to get to from all directions. Everyone sits in cubicles so everyone seems easily accessible. Lots of ways to know where people are and how to reach them if they are working from home. Café and gym on location. Safety is promoted as a strong value and there isn't pressure to work over 80 hours every 2 weeks. Work life balance is promoted as another strong value and burning or from overworking is discouraged.

Cons

Pressure to be 100% billable reduces opportunities for mentoring and other non-billable activities. Due to how many people work from home or other offices, it can be hard to get ahold of people in person. The re-org has disconnected a lot of networks and connections that were important for many reasons, including distributing workload and making sure those reviewing us were in the same office as us.

Pros

Flexibility, CH2M allows you to work from home or the office or anywhere, as long as your internet connected. CH2M also has some landmark projects, and some great people that make up the company. However, it used to be a great company, family feel and employees were well regarded. Unfortunately because CH2M has had some recent "bad" projects, the company constantly goes through a restructuring and has some considerable lay-offs.

Cons

CH2M talks about work-life balance, but in reality this is not true. There is considerable pressure to stay client billable and if you are not, it is very likely that you are going to be made redundant. CH2M has a little yellow book of values, but rarely follows it, and management pressures employees. One specific example would be the DTRA Program Manager - who insists that his direct reports and staff that work on the DTRA program only bill 8hrs per day on their timesheet, regardless of the actual hours that they work. Although this is a direct violation of company policy - it is forced upon the employees who work on this program.

Pros

Plenty of on-line training. Work schedule is usually flexible. Tuition assistance available. Laid-back office environment. Company is well respected by most clients. Benefits are relatively good.

Cons

Reward and recognition is virtually non-existent, except for maybe project managers. If your not in the right clique at the office, you'll be the first on the chopping block, regardless of how good of a worker you are. Engineers are treated as disposable labor and if there isn't enough billable work available, their hours are cut until they are laid-off. Human resources is done through the company website and it's very frustrating to get employee issues reolved. Your often asked to relocate to remote areas if you want to stay employed with the company. Junior employees have little opportunity for advancement and mentoring is very poor. Their project delivery model is very top-heavy with too many project managers, accountants and administrative assistants. Engineers and designers don't rate very high in the project delivery process. The engineering and design work for large, high profile projects is outsourced to countries where the pay rate is cheaper.

Pros

Flexible work schedule, PTO bumps the longer you are employed, awesome coworkers, great clients, many offices so can share work and work remotely on many projects, have many services in house to offer to clients as a one stop shop

Cons

The company I started to work for almost 10 years ago is not at all what it is now. When I started here, everyone interviewing me had been here at least 10 years and some even 20 or more. There are a lot of reasons the average employee has now been with CH 2 years or less. We have become so top heavy that to justify the overhead for rebranding, the new my journey, and all the other fluff, all the employees working billable hours are told no more "non-essential travel or overhead". I get shoved around to a new OL at least once a year and most of them are in another office. They're told not to spend money on coming to meet their new staff and they have no idea of what I actually do on a day to day basis. The reward and recognition (R and R) system is a joke. It is funded maybe through August each year and even then most PMs and DMs won't submit them, even if I work late nights and weekends to get projects done on time, under budget, and of quality. I am always busy not because my OL finds work, but because I do an excellent job so people come back and ask me directly to work on their projects. All communication from management (very top heavy) about the transformation program has stated quite plainly that all design will now be out of Poland or a design center and I have to justify keeping my work now instead of shipping it overseas to save a buck. I have to change what I do and now consult and not design, or leave.

Pros

Huge company so they do offer good benefits and they are stable. Almost all of the co-workers are good people to work with. Work is very interesting-some the projects world famous or ground-breaking. Even the regular every-day projects are interesting if you like the engineering, environmental kinds of things.

Cons

Huge company so you are basically a number. Top level management (HQ people) do not seem to be living on the same planet. People are left to find their own work. This means you have to have a large netwwork within the company and constantly be seeking out projects to work on. If you can't find work or have trouble being the go-get-em kind of person, you'll have a tough time here. If you're not billable, you're out.

Pros

The work-life balance is great in my opinion. I can schedule my time off as I need to as long as it doesn't impact my work. I work from home all the time and can work various hours should I need to. There are tons of international opportunities and domestic opportunities. As a software developer I've seen all sorts of interesting client locations that I would normally never experience. They support tuition reimbursement and offer various training opportunities. They offer stock purchase at a discount, 401k matching at about 80%, and other nice perks.

Cons

I hate billing to project numbers. Every hour is recorded to a number to charge it to. If I work 79 hours a pay period I get paid for 79 (I'm salary) if I work 100 and they not all client billable, I get paid for 80. If they're client billable I get "straight time" even though they're charging like 3.2 times what I get paid.

Pros

In general, employees are willing to help you and answer any questions you might have. Flexible work schedule, 100% employee-owned, most ethical company. Good upper management communication via blogs/newsletters/CEO 'tweets'.

Cons

HR is clueless, overworked, and underpaid. Relocation packages are terrible. Hard to work on cross-business group projects due to financials, even though you might have the exact skill set required. Energy Group is a conglomeration of 4 companies formed in 2007. Those 4 companies are trying to meld together and currently don't work well together. Standards and procedures for work processes are a complete and utter mess. Zero career guidance/support offered. Management closed a profitable group and laid off employees that were over100% billable for the year.

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.