Industry Specialisms Household Service Industry and Engineering

Following experience building motivated and highly profitable management teams in a national tree care company in the UK and also with a multinational engineering contractor (Technip FMC) in the offshore oilfield industry I have a wealth of experience and industry insight into organising household service industry business and large heavy engineering project management.
These are two very distinct industry types with a wide variation in possible management structures but both have some distinct requirements which drive the basic structure of the business management and operations.

Household Service Industry Management
Household service industries, once they grow beyond the small business with no office requirement, usually have to deal with and manage two distinct workflows. One is office based and the other is on the road with a team of professionals supplying the company services to clients. The other, office based workflow, is predominantly involved in marketing and customer service. These two departments can obviously grow many other roles as the size of a company increases. The service delivery department starts requiring tool inventory management and vehicle repair and maintenance. The office based department usually assumes the workflow management for the service delivery department and eventually also a human resources role.

Management staff must learn a wide variety of skills as the company grows especially in the early days of the company growth and rolls change and grow rapidly.

Heavy Engineering

In large heavy engineering companies there are many different layers of management. These range from board level strategic planning for the company down to project management, project support department management down to basic office management and document management as well as the heavy involvement or human resources to ensure minimal workflow disruption from the inevitable workforce turnover.

These companies, large or small, usually have one repeating theme in their management structures  which is: the project management team. The project team will usually comprise of mostly engineers at various levels of experience and seniority with some taking on purely managerial roles. Non engineering staff will usually be office administration staff.

Modern Engineering Management History

Since the 1980s engineering project management has changed significantly with certain industry sectors being the greatest drives for change. One of the largest modern engineering industry sectors is undoubtedly the upstream oil and gas industry. With the availability of much higher revenues than public sector driven engineering such as civil engineering, the oil and gas industry has transformed modern engineering and engineering management.

Changes and innovations which took place in the oil and gas industry were driven mainly by two key drives; namely firstly profitability and cost efficiencies driven by the industry’s cyclic profitability driven in turn by oil prices and secondly  health and safety, which following disasters such as the Piper Alpha disaster became one of the most expensive potential hazards to any industry worldwide. (Expensive both in monetary value and also in human life in a dangerous industry)

Following a former career as an engineer I have worked in project management and since then grown as a management consultant in both the oil industry, real estate development, mining and security as well as UK service based industries.

I live breath and love management and the great benefits that good management can bring to companies and essentially the quality of work and life that everyone in the company can gain. A larger or growing business dosn’t have to bring stress and headaches. When preparation for growth is carried out then management takes on a different essence al together and becomes true management rather than firefighting and daily organization.

Please get in touch if you are interested in a strategy session to see how I can help you with your business.

 

 

13 years as a management coach following a post doctorate in psychology with a specialization in modern corporate management structures.