Project reference · Engineering & industry
Deploying tradesmen, then keeping them paid.
An energy joint venture servicing gas turbines in North Africa needed Ukrainian welders, mechanics, electricians and HSE engineers on site. Finding them was the easy part. Getting them there legally — and paying them reliably once they were — was the project.
Welders tested by hand, not by CV
Assessment
Moved in numbered teams, with visas
Mobilisation
Paid monthly into Ukrainian accounts
Payroll
Two and a half years, two phases
Duration
The chain
Seven steps between a CV and a wage
The hard parts
Where it gets difficult
A CV cannot tell you if someone can weld
Welders were tested physically before anyone booked a flight, with a written result per candidate returned to the client. Candidates who failed the test were compensated for their time — which is the only fair way to ask someone to travel and prove themselves.
A consular file for every person
Passports and names translated and certified, invitation letters lodged with an embassy, fees paid in foreign currency and reconciled against receipts, and a visa timeline tracked separately from the hiring plan — because it is the one that actually decides the start date.
Wages that cross borders
People working outside the EU, employed through more than one entity, paid monthly into Ukrainian accounts in euros. That pattern draws financial-monitoring questions from banks as a matter of routine, and the answers have to be documented before the first payment, not after it.
People are not cargo
Workers on a remote industrial site raise problems — about conditions, pay dates, contracts. Complaints reached us within weeks of the first arrivals. Having someone whose job is to answer them, in the worker’s own language, is part of the service, not an overhead.
The client changed owner mid-project
A corporate acquisition put the account under a new parent company. It went quiet for a year and came back needing a fresh master agreement rather than a continuation. Long engagements outlive the org charts they started in.
Recruitment turned into administration
The first phase found people and moved them. The second employed them: contracts, timesheets, insurance, tax treatment, monthly invoicing and, when the work ended, individually signed terminations. Most of the engagement was the second phase.
What we did
Recruit, employ, pay — in that order, over three years
- Sourced welders, mechanical technicians, electricians, foremen and HSE engineers, and brought in turbine and rotating-equipment specialists internationally where Ukraine could not supply them.
- Ran physical trade testing with written results, and hosted the client’s own interviewers for selection events.
- Handled the consular file, travel and insurance, and moved people out in numbered teams.
- Then employed them: contracts, timesheets, monthly payroll, insurance, tax treatment and financial-monitoring compliance.
- And closed it down properly — individually signed termination agreements rather than an email.
This is the whole of what we do, on one account, in sequence: recruit, employ, pay and stay compliant.
How we work
We do not show you another company’s name
The client, the site and the people are not named here, and they will not be named in a meeting either. We are glad to talk this project through in detail — what we cannot do is discuss the last client that way with you, or you with the next one.
Next step
Sending Ukrainian staff somewhere difficult?
Trade testing, visas, insurance and payroll across borders are each solvable. The trouble starts when they are handled by four different suppliers who do not talk to each other.
