Stantec Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Stantec full-time for more than a year

Pros – upper management in edmonton no idea about how to run a architect company
young employees get lots of responcibility if they want

Cons – everyone leaves at 5. not a interesting office design . . dont do competitions. not enough creative designers

Advice to Senior Management – be more ambitious
no creativity ( its engineers)
do some interesting design to get noticed

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Stantec full-time

Pros – The management is fairly young (30's-40's) and have a better understanding of what drives and motivates younger workers who are replacing retirees. Flex time, work from home are great perks for the modern young professional with a family and kids.

The office culture is the most relaxed I've ever worked at. I'd rate cross-discipline communication at 4/5. Stantec is also a great place to climb up the ladder because it's such a large company with many opportunities. If you want to advance to a project manager from a biologist, they have internal training programs to train you in basic PM skills like finance, accounting, leadership. If you want to stay where you are and just rack up the experience in your field, you're free to do that too. Your team lead will check with you every quarter to see if you've achieved your career goals over the last few months.

Management within my office location seems to strongly promote harmony. People don't need to step over others to advance and the general belief is that if the company takes care of it's employees, the profit will come naturally through more efficient and satisfied employees. The company is willing to fly you to other office locations just to meet and greet other Stantec employees in your field, so that you're not calling them and asking for information without ever knowing what they look like.

Cons – While the total number of people in a given department can be large among the company, like 50 wildlife biologists in the company, some departments can be pretty scattered resulting in only 1 or 2 people in an office location. It can make it difficult for the more isolated people to learn and advance.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Stantec full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Pay is at or above average for the engineering industry. They have good benefits and an employee stock ownership program. The company will provide you the opportunity to work on large engineering projects.

Cons – Your career may stagnate. In all fairness, this is probably more a result of the economy rather than the company. However, organic growth instead of the current practice of acquiring companies could be used to develop geographical regions. This might provide internal talent with an opportunity to develop their career and move up in the organization.

Advice to Senior Management – Day to day profit center and office management is good. At the corporate level, pursue organic growth and use internal talent to develop that growth.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Stantec full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Location, benefits, RRSPs, other staff.

Cons – Size leads to lack of options for progress, easy to be overlooked. Another reviewer said "If you're a young person and can curry favour , you can't beat it as a place to learn and advance." - this is completely true, if you are young and awesome but fly under the radar, less talented people are often promoted and given opportunities ahead of you.

Another reviewer said: They definitely played favorites with work assignments, training, and bonuses. - True

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Stantec full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – ability to work across North America from many offices
strong presence in multiple sectors and service lines
ability to be part of multi-disipline projects

Cons – some managers with misplaced focus on utilization of thier people over what is best for clients and the company

Advice to Senior Management – management approach is still not consistent with the CEO's vision in all regions, need to identify managers that are just out to climb the ladder and not develop employees, quality services that will lead to organic growth

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Stantec full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Variety of project types and sizes

Cons – Driven by the the bottom line
Work-sharing doesn't really work - offices fight for revenue
Different offices compete for the same work
Young managers are put in over their heads
They simply don't care about their people

Advice to Senior Management – What upper management says to the offices doesn't matter.
People Center? not a chance!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Stantec full-time for more than a year

Pros – Generally the company is well organized on the HR front. Decent (not great) benefits. Average Pay. There are good opportunities for the 'right' people. Stantec has the ability to grab high profile projects due to it's diversified service offerings. If you happen to be on one of those projects, then life is grand at Stantec.

Cons – Engineering consulting firms are, in my opinion, crappy places for engineers to work. Better to seek out work from the consulting firm's customers - even if the pay is lower, the job security and work opportunities are better. Stantec stands to lose a lot of business as they are not integrating their PC's rapidly enough. As other reviewers have pointed out, the Profit Centre organizational model is killing their business and puts up walls between offices that don't need to exist. Also, as other reviewers have noted, shortly after acquisition, mostly younger managers put in high positions - I would have preferred to see some older people with some wisdom and patience running the show. Also you are expected to get your own work as a PM, which is not entirely a bad thing. I found their rates to be too high for many customers and could be potentially pricing themselves out of certain markets.

Advice to Senior Management – Integrate PC's faster. Should be a top priority. Evaluate and potentially eliminate the PC model.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Stantec

Pros – 1. A handful of smart, hardworking, junior-level staff that work dilligently despite being severely underpaid with little to no chance of growth and development. 2. The architecture department.

Cons – If you love being discouraged from working hard and being reprimanded and punished for going above and beyond, then this is the perfect place for you. Otherwise, stay away! If you are ambitious, intelligent, and hardworking, this is seen as a threat to the completely incompetent management, and you will be forced out whether by choice or not. The lack of professionalism in this office is unbelievable for a company of this size. Do not expect your voice to be heard here; do not expect anyone to value hard work and intellect. This place is an utter disgrace compared to the rest of the local consulting community. The other reviews for this office are spot on; listen to the numbers!

Advice to Senior Management – Think about what is best for the future of the organization and not just the current state. If you want the company to succeed, you need to invest in the future and stop worrying about your oversized paycheck. Most importantly, put others above yourself since all the people below you are keeping the place afloat.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Stantec

Pros – casual environment, friendly workers, not too much pressure

Cons – Boring, redundant, nothing to do half the time

Former Employee – worked at Stantec full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – They are big. Wait, is that a pro?

Cons – When it comes to design and architecture, they have the worst organization format you can think of. They are publicly traded so it's all about growing and getting bigger, fatter, more inefficient, less effective, more expensive. And, clients DO notice. After the merge we lost all our loyal clients, we got too big for them. And not big enough to fetch bigger clients. 70% of the staff has left since the merger. Before then we hadn't lost more than 10% in 5 years.
I still remember how HR landed after the merger telling us that "Nothing will change. Staff is our more important asset". It isn't. Within 2 years you couldn't find a happy face in the office.

Advice to Senior Management – Tell the truth to the staff (you are 1 of 12,000 now. Stuff will change, not always for the best). Listen to the local offices. Free them from your bureaucracy.
DO NOT fire managers or principals.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company