We place permanent staff into the UK refineries, petrochemical plants, gas distribution networks and process engineering houses that keep the country running. Steady, deliberate, and built around the brief.
The cost of a poor placement at a refinery, gas terminal or chemical works is measured in lost production, not just lost fees. We work like the operations teams we serve - with discipline, paperwork, and zero shortcuts.
We can talk through a hydrocracker outage, an LNG send-out unit, an HP gas pipeline pig run or an ATEX zoning question without translating from a script. That comes from knowing the people who run them.
Right-to-work, CCNSG / SMSTS / IOSH credentials, technical references and process-safety pedigree all checked before a CV reaches you. The shortlist is what you act on, not what you start triaging.
The person who took the brief is the person who runs the search and walks the candidate through to start date. Nothing gets handed off, nothing gets lost in a CRM hand-over.
We do not chase every vacancy that comes past. These are the sectors where our network runs deep enough to be useful inside a fortnight.
Process operators, panel operators, shift team leaders, refinery operations managers, board operators, cat-cracker specialists.
Process engineers, polymerisation specialists, ethylene and propylene unit leads, BTX and aromatics technologists, PTA / PET specialists.
HP and IP pipeline engineers, gas network managers, integrity engineers, gas pre-heater specialists, AGI and PRS engineers, mains replacement leads.
LNG plant operators, regasification engineers, cryogenic specialists, gas treatment leads, terminal supervisors, send-out unit engineers.
Chemical and process engineers, FEED leads, debottlenecking specialists, energy efficiency engineers, simulation engineers (HYSYS, ProII), CAPEX project engineers.
Mechanical engineers, maintenance team leaders, rotating equipment specialists, fixed equipment inspectors, planned and shutdown maintenance leads.
E&I engineers, control systems specialists, DCS / SCADA leads, ICSS engineers, ATEX-zoned technicians, functional safety (TUV) engineers.
Process safety engineers, HSE advisors, COMAH leads, HAZOP / LOPA chairs, PSSR specialists, occupational health and hygiene managers.
Project engineers, project managers, package engineers, EPC project directors, planning engineers, cost engineers, document controllers.
Terminal managers, tank farm supervisors, fuels distribution leads, COMAH duty holders, loading rack engineers, transferral and metering specialists.
Pipeline engineers, integrity managers, corrosion specialists, in-line inspection leads, cathodic protection engineers, pipeline construction managers.
Decom project managers, site remediation engineers, demolition supervisors, asbestos and contaminated land specialists, materials disposal leads.
We move at process-industry pace. Deliberate, paperworked, transparent. You always know where the search is on any given day.
One call to understand the role, the team, the operations context and the realistic salary band against the rotation. We come with questions, not a pitch.
We work the network, then the open market. Every approach references your business carefully. We will not name you to anyone we have not already prepared the candidate for.
Three to five candidates, properly vetted. CCNSG, SMSTS, IOSH and process safety credentials confirmed before introduction. Each ranked against the brief.
We coordinate the offer, manage counter-offer pressure, line up the start date, and check in at day 7, 30 and 90 to make sure the placement is holding.
The UK onshore energy and process sector does not need another generic recruitment agency. It needs people who understand the difference between a shutdown, a turnaround and an outage. People who can read a P&ID without flinching. People who know that hiring a panel operator into a COMAH-tier site is not the same as hiring one anywhere else.
That is the gap Thorold Dewling fills. We are a small, sector-fluent permanent recruitment desk that places engineers, operators, managers and project staff into UK refineries, petrochemical plants, gas distribution operators, LNG terminals, storage facilities and the EPC consultancies that serve them.
Operations directors who are tired of receiving CVs that do not match the brief. Plant managers who need a reliability engineer in eight weeks, not eighteen. HR leads who want one consultant they can call directly and trust to tell them straight when a search is not landing.
If your brief sits inside a UK process operation and you would rather work with someone who already knows your sector, that is what we are here for.
Offshore oil & gas (we partner with sister desks for that). Onshore wind farms above the substation. Nuclear new-build. Pure construction outside the EPC envelope. We will tell you within one call if a brief is not a good fit so you can place it where it lands fastest.