entry level technician

materials technician

senior field technician

environmental project manager

construction laboratory technician

ECS Limited

I would not recommend working here unless you are desperate. 

Cons
- The pay is less than other companies- they start most people out at $12.00
- You don't get a vehicle 
- You don't get a personal life. I was told by the scheduler "you should just assume you'll be working every weekend so don't make any plans"
- You spend 4 days watching videos in the office and this is your training
- You have to constantly call your project managers or engineers when you are in the field because you aren't properly trained on how to do things
- You don't find out what your schedule is until the night before.
- You can tell the scheduler and manager that you need a few hours or a day off and remind them 10 times that you need a day off and they will still schedule you for that day
- The scheduler will call you constantly to see if you can do a different job when you are already out in the field
- You're sent to jobs even if you tell the scheduler you haven't been trained on it
- Some project managers don't respond when you are in the field and need an answer on something
- You don't get pay raises you earned even after reminding the manager you completed the training and received your certification. This happened to me and other workers.
- Insanely high turnover rate because field techs are underpaid, undertrained, and unappreciated
- Expect to work lots of weekends. They "rotate" the weekend schedule but half the time the scheduler will call and ask you to work even if you aren't on the team to work that weekend. 
- The scheduler has no concept of how much people work. We worked 60 hour weeks M-F and then would be called in to work on the weekends. 
- You can work a full day and be called that afternoon to see if you can work a job starting at 1am that morning. The company accepts these jobs and tells the client they will provide the work without knowing if any techs can do it. They will then pressure you into working or try to make you feel guilty for not accepting a job. 
- Equipment selection and availability is HORRIBLE. There is no decent equipment. If you are lucky enough to find a working piece of concrete equipment you have to take it home with you or you will never see it again. 
- Techs don't take care of their equipment and most of it is broken or faulty. 
- Job is very weather dependent (which can be a pro if you like random days off) so sometimes you can only get 20 hours a week if it's bad weather
- very rough on your personal vehicle. Muddy and rough terrain at some sites, gets the inside of your vehicle dirty
- Impossible to advance, most people quit after a few months and go somewhere else
- You get no say in your schedule, you pretty much never know where you will be and can't give much input on whether a site is good for you or not
- Good work is not recognized or appreciated

Pros
- There is plenty of overtime. You can make decent money if you are willing to work 60+ hours a week.
- Mileage compensation is a great addition to the low pay and can get you some extra money if you drive a lot for work
- Benefits package is decent
- Managers are generally nice and helpful

The general structure of ECS is great and there are a wide array of experienced and tenured  staff. Coworkers generally are friendly and willing to help.

However, the upper management make hasty decisions and generally only care about metrics rather than employee moral. 

Also they have Pm's and above do all the work of Invoicing, collections, business development, as well as multiple internal metrics based requirements rather than having separate departments for such things like other companies do. In addition to the aforementioned non billable responsibilities,  they require you to be between 65-80% billable every week (depending on the position you hold) or you get chastised (this goes back to them only caring about their internal and external metrics).

This leads to an unnecessarily stressful work environment and leads to a horrible work life balance. They do preach otherwise to the point I made, but they don't back it up, it's always just shallow words with no action behind it.

Ecs is great for introverted single people, introverted married people with no kids, or workaholics / yes men or women. If you have a family, and care to be a part of said family, ECS is not the place for you.

In the Construction Materials Testing department at ECS Raleigh there are no 'typical days'. Your next day is determined at the end of traditional business hours and can range from footing checks to concrete testing to soil sampling and compaction. This keeps it interesting for those interested in construction materials testing or geotechnical engineering. 

There is also no set way to be trained at the company so the initial weeks of being apart of the office are a little hectic and the abundant amount of new information can be overwhelming. 

The project managers are fairly patient when it comes to your first times out on a site by yourself but do expect employees to pick up procedures soon after employment. 

Other field technicians are typically willing to explain in depth why and how to perform tests and write field reports. 

The hardest part of the job are the lulls in work availability. Although the company tries hard to keep full-time employees on sites day after day, the quantity of projects available that need technicians varies greatly. 

On the other hand, when hours are available, the people on most project sites are the best part of the job. Most contractors, laborers, operators, etc. are willing to help you do your job better. The same can be said for project managers at the office.

There is no work life balance. Management expects salaried employees to work 45-50 hours a week even though the contract says 40 hours. If you are not working at least 45 hours a week you get criticized by management saying you are not working hard enough. They also have a ridiculous expectation that even if you work 50 hours and try to take a day off you need to use 8 hours of pto to cover the day off. They push unrealistic deadlines causing employees to burn out quickly. At the office I worked at according to long time employees each year they hire a bunch of people in the beginning of the year and a few months in they all quit because of poor management style. Management is also very sneaky about information and lies about sites they are sending you too just to make it sound less bad than it really is. It would be so much better if they just were upfront and honest about what we needed to do instead of saying the site is only 10 minutes away but its 30 or saying it is easy it's already been cleared woods should only take about an hour and then you end up in thick woods unable to see a few feet in front of you for 5 or more hours. 
Specifically, Laura and Trey at the Charlotte office pick favorites and will only talk to you if they need something from you. They make sure that you know that they are your manager and make you feel intimidated to come into work every day. 
The office is also very cliquey and if you are in the wrong clique, you get left out and get the worst of the worst jobs. 

I was new to this type of work, which I have factored into my evaluation. 

A typical day involved driving a company vehicle to a few job sites and testing plastic concrete. You'll need to pick up concrete cylinders at some point, too. The company vehicle was a large perk. The Green Bay and Neenah offices offered this perk while I worked there. 

It will help to know how to perform air content tests and slump tests for concrete. The company will teach you these tests, as well as how to prepare concrete cylinders. However, you'll need to be completely competent in performing these tests by yourself within a couple weeks, or you'll start getting negative feedback from management. 
You'll do proctor tests on soil samples as well, though this will generally be done with documentation and other technicians available for reference. 

Toughest part of the job was the highly distracting work environment. Workplace culture is fast-paced, since you are constantly being monitored by the client on construction sites. You will spend a lot of time on construction sites, and you'll be expected to work quickly. 

My fellow technicians were the most enjoyable part of the job for me. Training with them was an enjoyable experience, and I learned a lot.

ECS takes in people with absolutely no experience in the construction field, which would be great if they actually trained those people to succeed at their job.  The training I received about a year and a half ago was lackluster but still a million times better than the training I would receive now. You are given a 2 day course and then thrown into the field to figure it out on your own. This is why this company has such an unbelievably high turnover rate. Project managers can be frustrating to deal with but they're good people. The corporate offices however, are the devil. They will find any which way to fine the individual offices to retain as much revenue as possible. The offices will get fined over not having a 90% overall pre-site safety form completion for its employees or if a report is submitted 2 days after the job has been completed.  The fines take away from all technician and office employee bonuses.

I kind of expected this company would be a piece of work judging how inefficiently ran my interview was(instead of having 3 people ask you questions at once in an interview, they had 3 people individually interview each for about 30 minutes thus having you spend almost 3 hours in an interview). My software manager never seems to know whats happening with individual teams and is very quick to blame a jr developer for things not going the way they should. Also seemed to be very strict towards me watching videos on my free time despite everyone at the office doing the exact same thing(I've seen people watch movies on their free time, play overwatch and even saw one former co-worker bust out a nintendo swtich during their downtime). I was abruptly let go nearly a year into the job, wasn't given an exact reason why I was let nor was I given paper work explaining this. This was just after I had just finished a big project for them and just sent in the documentation for said project as well. The company made me feel used and not valued at all by my managers. 

Don't work for this company if you feel like being respected like a software developer.

ECS is a very successful, well established business with an aggressive growth business model. Each branch is expected to grow in the local market AND they are always opening new branches to capture more geographical territory. This means that there is always room to grow at ECS. Management will always give eager and deserving employees as much responsibility as they can handle - and compensation increases with experience and responsibility. There are many stories of technicians advancing through the ranks to middle and upper management.

Entry level engineers and technicians are expected to obtain necessary certifications, paid for by the company. As each certification is earned, you get a bump in pay. Again, more experience leads to more value, more responsibility, more opportunity, and more money!

At my location, technicians are always appreciated for their hard work and get promoted rapidly.

ECS is big on offering paid time off and expecting you to use it. ECS believes that people need to take time off to relax and decompress. This is one reason many people appreciate working at ECS.

Expectations for 24 hour availability 6 days a week (Sundays used to be voluntary but even that started to be forced). 

Micromanaging was rampant, instructions given were usually unclear, minimal task training and low support when in the field. 

Techs were regularly spoken down to be PMs ("this job is so easy a monkey can do it and the techs still cant do it right" is something a PM said in a room full of techs). 

If you injure yourself at home, don't expect ANY accommodations to be made as they will still make you do tasks against doctor orders, perdiem pay is TRASH and the only way you actually make money with this company is to grind, ask for extra work, make yourself visible in the office and almost beg for more certifications.

Oh! If youre experienced and applying to ECS, there's a high possibility that they're gonna still pay you the entry rate and certification raises. Length of service in the industry mattered very little to them at the end of the day. 

Answered multiple line phones, schedule appointments, type reports, invoice, prepare proposals, work authorizations enter all information in data bases, notarize documents, electronic filing, emailed reports to clients, letters & correspondence to clients, purchase orders, collect payments, greet customers, attend meetings, helped prepare open house yearly, webinar meetings & training, made corrections to reports, proposals and other documents as needed, processed incoming & outgoing mail and shipments, used drop box and project mates, maintained postage equipment,  used all ECS applications searched emails to distribute to proper personnel, faxed documents, photocopy and copy large construction plans for filing.

I learned how to be patient, organized and efficient and team player.

I assisted management as needed.

Co-workers were great team members.

Managing all duties efficiently in a timely manner  when all due at the same time.

Co-workers, learning

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Entry level technician 1 salary reported	$19.00 per hour
Materials technician 35 salaries reported	$18.44 per hour
Senior field technician 48 salaries reported	$24.24 per hour
Environmental project manager 72 salaries reported	$90,670 per year
Construction laboratory technician 65 salaries reported	$18.64 per hour

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