Same as other Corps - Senior Project Engineer DPR Construction Employee Review

I have waited a few months since leaving DPR to write this. I have given a lot of thought to this. “Title-less Company” - I guess there is a little positive to this, but overall it’s a negative. I feel it’s just an easier way for them to gate keep promotions and advancement. It also makes it really confusing for anyone starting to know who are the seniors you can go to for guidance. Sure, it’s cool that titles aren’t used or prevalent, but why? If you earned a title you should be recognized for it, and it would have helped understand team member's roles better if they at least had titles in their email signatures. More than anything it’s a “culture” selling point that just makes your job unnecessarily confusing. Culture - A word all construction corps throw around like they’ve got the best one. Frankly, they’re all the same. Spend WAY too much money on company events, outings, wine bars, etc. Between all of my previous employers DPR definitely spent the most on their appearance of culture and events. Sure, it’s fun and great to get people together, but when your business unit is falling behind in its revenue goals it’s time to pull back and reconsider where those funds are being applied. Obviously, they aren’t going to come out and admit they’re cutting staff due to lack of work, but that’s what they did in Q3 of ‘25. The Healthcare division hired me to be a PE the prior September. I never got to perform that role and instead was put into estimating the first couple of months and then moved to SPW (Self Perform Work) for the remainder of my time there. They chose to move over other team members from SPW to the Healthcare team prior to moving me because those team members were cheaper, even though I voiced frequently I did not want to stay in SPW and had the healthcare experience needed on those projects. SPW - DO NOT join this team if you have the option. It’s currently being led by someone with little to no field experience and a massive ego. Narcissists are not good leaders. I learned of bad decisions by upper management in SPW almost weekly. Putting a team member with 0 experience in DFH (doors, frames, hardware) on one of the largest and most complex jobs the unit has, in the middle of the scope, without proper guidance while you have team members with actual experience available was the biggest bad decision I saw. I also saw logistic decisions required for each project that made no sense. A project with 10 doors does not need twice the amount of material handling to “keep all operations the same”. DFH specifically has never been profitable for the BU. Under the current leadership it won’t ever be. I managed to make 3 projects profitable for DFH in my short time at DPR, and I believe this intimidated the executive over it because he couldn’t do it. Which led to me being let go. My termination - A couple of things, and this is important to everyone working at DPR or any corporate construction company. They listed the reason for my termination as “Unsatisfactory Performance”. 30 days prior they had a meeting with me where they made an official mark-up of things for me to improve on. This was all obviously planned for multiple reasons: 1) If they document a negative employee review 30 days prior to termination of employee, they do not have to pay unemployment for that employee when they fire them. I was never given any solid reasons for my termination or the review. The “executive” that set all of this up grasped at straws of very minimal things and mistakes I had made as examples in the review meeting, and wouldn’t even give me a single reason when I was terminated. As someone with a lot of experience in construction, I practically begged for reasons for my termination. I literally got nothing but silence. Then I applied for unemployment to give me more time in my job search. I was rejected due to the review documentation 30 days prior. The documentation they sent to the GA department of labor did not even include the comments I added to the review. 2) If the BU (business unit) is not hitting their goal they will begin to cut the higher paid PE's and PM's first. Regardless of their competency in comparison to cheaper team members. I saw this with another PM shortly after I was terminated. That PM had been with DPR for 8 years, had a negative 30-day prior review regardless of their great performance, and was then terminated in the same fashion as me. There are likely others, but they get those people out of the office in those 30 days so your termination can stay quiet. Specifically to me, after my 30 days review all of my ongoing projects were taken away from me (6 or 7 scopes) and I was assigned as an assistant to a PM for one drywall scope. That PM did not need an assistant. I was given tasks that did not make sense but at the time I did not care. Why would I pour my passion into a role I never wanted or asked for that was beneath my level of experience and ability? I just kept my head down and did was I was told. The year prior another PE was handled the same way as me. Put me with that PM, let that PM know the intent is to fire me after the 30-days are up. Have that PM document and look for reasons to terminate so the company can be justified. In both instances it was the same PM and Exec making these calls. There were likely others handled this way. Trainings: Terrible training. The SPW exec gave me a 30 mins crash course on one of the most unreasonably complicated budget softwares I have ever seen. I was able to figure it all out on my own, but others with less experience continue to struggle after months of using the software. It is a cheap software, completely outdated by at least 10 years, and ridiculously complicated for its role. Balfour Beatty and Batson-cook's systems were not much better, but they at least spent proper time training new employees before giving them tasks in it. A common thing I heard from upper management was "sink or swim" when I asked why we were putting inexperienced team members on tasks they knew little of. That is not a proper way to lead people. It is a lazy cheap option that allows upper management scapegoats when that employee inevitably fails. Office politics - At this point I get that corporations inevitably have office politics. For the first time in my career I actually drank the cool-aid at DPR. I believed in my first 6 months that they were different, that I actually found a company I would be happy at for years. Then the veil dropped and I saw that DPR is no better than the rest. Gatekeeping roles, bad leaders in positions of team management, and whispers behind your back by trusted colleagues. To upper management at any construction corp. it is all a game. How can they make themselves look better and their "competition" (other team mates) look worse. It was a daily thing I did not even notice until 6 months in. They will not tell you of concerns to your face, instead they will document and tattle to their superior's for brownie points, and that behavior is rewarded by superiors. In Summary: If you are early in your career as a PE then take the opportunities where you can to join the corporate GC's. Learn everything you can from them. How they operate, how their contracts work, what their systems are, how they perform scope reviews, etc. Everything you can. Spend a few years with them and then get out. Find a smaller GC that is not incorporated yet and join them. You will likely be paid more and will not have to worry about being gatekept from advancement. This is the strategy I have used and it worked perfectly. DPR is not a terrible place to work. Just keep your eyes and ears open, and maneuver intelligently through their hoops.