Job Placement · Construction Management · Field Engineer and Coordinator
This is where construction careers start and where the statutory training map actually bites. OSHA 10 is voluntary federally, but Nevada requires the card within 15 days of hire and eight more jurisdictions mandate it on public works or, in Philadelphia, on every site. BEG places this seat on Tier I milestone billing at $4,680 to $5,616.
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TL;DR
The field engineer and project coordinator seat is the entry rung of the construction office, and it is also the seat most exposed to the patchwork of state training law. OSHA describes its 10-hour course as primarily intended for entry level workers and says the programme is voluntary at federal level. State legislatures disagree: Nevada requires a card within 15 days of hire, Massachusetts applies on public contracts over $10,000, New York State at $250,000 and Philadelphia on every construction and demolition site. BEG scopes the jurisdictions your candidate will actually work in, then places at $4,680 to $5,616 on fixed milestones.
Entry, And The Legal Map
Because the training requirement is written into state statute rather than federal regulation, and the deadlines are short. In Nevada the clock is fifteen days from hire, not from the first day on site.
The Statutory Map
These are the ones with clear statutory text. The triggers differ by an order of magnitude, so the question is always which jurisdiction the person will be working in, not which state your office is in.
| Jurisdiction | What the statute requires | Threshold or timing |
|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts, M.G.L. c.30 section 39S | All employees at the worksite to have completed an OSHA-approved construction safety and health course of at least 10 hours, with documentation on the first certified payroll report. | Contracts estimated by the awarding authority to cost more than $10,000. Employees without documentation are subject to immediate removal. |
| New York State, Labor Law section 220-h | All laborers, workers and mechanics on the public work site certified before performing any work as having completed an OSHA-approved course of at least ten hours. | Public work contracts where the total cost of all work is at least $250,000. |
| Rhode Island, section 37-23-1 | An OSHA ten-hour construction safety program for on-site employees, with the card carried on the person at all times while work is being performed. | Municipal and state construction projects with a total project cost of $100,000 or more. |
| New Hampshire, RSA 277:5-a | An OSHA 10-hour construction safety program for on-site employees, completed before beginning work. | Public work or building contracts with a total project cost of $100,000 or more. |
Three more are worth knowing: Missouri requires public works contractors to provide a ten-hour OSHA construction safety programme, with employees completing it within sixty days of beginning work; Connecticut requires proof with the weekly certified payroll form on public works projects and adds a four-hour refresher for certain trades; and West Virginia applies above $50,000 on public improvements. Compliance is the employer's duty, not ours, but we will not present a candidate into a jurisdiction without raising it. The supervisory equivalent of all this sits on the superintendent page, and the vertical overview is on the construction management placement service page.
Tier I Pricing On The Entry Seat
This is the cheapest search we run, at $4,680 to $5,616 on defined milestones, and the reason is honest rather than promotional: early-career candidates are genuinely looking, so the work of finding them is smaller than the work of prising a superintendent out of a live project. A contingency fee on an entry-level construction salary typically lands somewhere in the low to mid teens of thousands, which is a strange amount of money to pay for a hire that should take three weeks. Where a firm is building a bench of two or three coordinators at once, the difference across the group is usually most of another salary.
Why This Seat Is A Succession Decision
Every project manager your firm will have in ten years is currently a field engineer somewhere. Arkansas State's construction management career path puts the entry band at zero to five years as project engineer, project coordinator or assistant superintendent, and the move to construction project manager at five to ten years. Firms that stop hiring at this level during a soft market are the same firms paying a premium for project managers six years later, and the two decisions are never connected by anyone in the room. Filling this seat is the cheapest thing on the org chart and the one with the longest tail. The isolved average is 23 to 35 days.
Building The Entry Bench
All three produce a person on site. Only one of them produces the project manager you will need in six years, and they differ on who employs the person meanwhile.
| Model | Who employs the coordinator | How you pay | Right when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Convert an intern or co-op | You, eventually | Internship cost now, with a conversion rate you cannot control | You have a relationship with a construction management programme and the patience to run it properly. |
| Staffing firm cover | The staffing firm | Hourly bill rate with margin, for as long as the job runs | You need document control on one project and are not building a bench. |
| BEG permanent placement | You | Tier I milestone fee of $4,680 to $5,616, fixed before sourcing | You want the person who becomes your project manager, and you want them on your payroll from day one. |
BEG is not a staffing agency and does not employ construction staff, so at this level we are genuinely not competing with the hourly firms and will say so. What we place is a permanent person, for a fee agreed before sourcing, with a 45-day replacement guarantee and 50% off a repeat search for the same seat. If you are hiring your first coordinator ever, the more useful conversation is usually about who will supervise them. The next rung is assistant project manager.
FAQ
On a general contractor’s job it is the entry rung of the office side. Arkansas State describes the entry-level band, zero to five years, as project engineer, project coordinator or assistant superintendent, focused on learning daily site operations through daily reports, assisting with scheduling, tracking progress and reviewing submittals.
No, and they share almost no candidates. In a plant or manufacturing business a project engineer owns a capital project through to commissioning and handover. On a jobsite the field engineer supports a superintendent and a project manager. We ask which one you mean before doing anything else.
Not federally. OSHA states that the 10-hour training programme is primarily intended for entry level workers and that outreach training emphasises hazard identification, avoidance, control and prevention rather than OSHA standards. It also says the programme is voluntary at federal level, while acknowledging that some jurisdictions legislate it.
Several, with different triggers. Nevada requires a construction worker other than a supervisory employee to obtain an OSHA-10 completion card not later than 15 days after being hired. Missouri, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York and West Virginia each impose requirements on public works, at different contract value thresholds.
Massachusetts applies at contracts estimated by the awarding authority to cost more than $10,000, West Virginia above $50,000, Rhode Island and New Hampshire at $100,000 or more, and New York State at $250,000 or more. Missouri and Connecticut impose the requirement on public works contracts without a comparable value trigger in the operative provisions.
Philadelphia is the clearest example. The city states that all workers on a construction or demolition site must complete a basic training course, that the course must be OSHA 10 Construction from an authorised OSHA Outreach Trainer or an approved alternative, and that contractors must keep proof of training on the job site.
It varies and it is not trivial. Nevada requires an employer to suspend or terminate employment if a worker fails to present a current and valid OSHA-10 completion card within 15 days of hire. Massachusetts states that any employee found on a covered worksite without documentation is subject to immediate removal. Connecticut allows removal after the fifteenth day of non-compliance.
This is a Tier I search at $4,680 to $5,616, the lowest band we run, billed against milestones. It reflects a genuinely more tractable search than a superintendent or estimator, because graduates and early-career candidates are actively looking rather than being prised away from a live project.
Both work and they fail differently. A construction management graduate arrives fluent in the software and short on credibility with the trades. Somebody who came off the tools arrives with the opposite problem. Decide which gap your superintendent has the patience to close, because they are the one who will be closing it.
Arkansas State puts the mid-level transition at five to ten years, after which a candidate is ready to become a construction project manager. Firms that promote much faster than that usually do so because they are short of project managers, and the results are visible about eighteen months later.
23 to 35 days from discovery call to accepted offer on isolved placement data, at an 86% fill rate on live searches, and often quicker at this level. The limiting factor is usually your own interview scheduling rather than candidate availability.
No. A staffing firm employs the coordinator and bills you hourly for the run of a job. BEG places a permanent field engineer or project coordinator employed directly by your company, for a fee fixed before sourcing with a 45-day replacement guarantee.
Building the bench? See assistant project manager, superintendent, project manager and the plant-side project engineer, or all construction management placement.
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