Substantiating the Value of Engineering
Engineers are having great difficulty substantiating the value of proposed fees to potential clients. With more than thirty-four years in the business, I still face each request for a fee proposal with a certain amount of trepidation. The million-dollar question is, will the client accept the proposal? This trepidation is born out of the fact that I may be forced to convince beyond a shadow of a doubt that the proposed service is value for money
Tertiary engineering education did not adequately prepare me for this reality, as my first few positions as an engineering graduate were far removed from business. Would anyone readily question GE about their value for money? After all, GE’s tag line was “We bring Good Things to Life”. Goodyear Jamaica was the sole tyre manufacturer and, as such, could set the price of its tyres, leaving consumers with no choice but to purchase its brand or those it offered. The Caribbean Cement Company was void of competition, leaving consumers with no choice. The practising consulting engineer, on the other hand, has to work diligently to obtain confirmation of an accepted proposal.
I have practised my craft in several jurisdictions, and the reality I faced in each was the same. Multi-lateral agencies such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Caribbean Development Bank all have a healthy respect for the practice of engineering and the value an engineer brings to the projects they fund in the public sector.
The private sector, on the other hand, presents a different scenario, particularly in jurisdictions where professional regulation is not strictly enforced. Jamaica, for example, has an Engineering Registration Act, the Professional Engineers Registration Act 1987. The Republic of Trinidad & Tobago also has similar registration legislation; however, the enforcement in both jurisdictions is nothing compared to the requirements in Florida. The Registration Board in Trinidad encourages citizens to use a Registered Engineer for construction design or works, but its legislation does not effectively prevent non-registered engineers from practising. The local authority does not insist on signed and sealed design documentation. In Jamaica, it is slightly different, as the Registration Board can prevent unlicensed engineers from practising. The problem is that local authorities do not require mandatory signed and sealed construction design documentation. This does not apply in Florida, where the signing and sealing of design documentation is stringently enforced. Registration Boards in defined jurisdictions are mandated to ensure public safety from subpar engineering designs and works.
Furthermore, apart from public safety issues, engineers add value, which is one of the most important intangible assets. The homeowner, whose cut-stone retaining wall failed the moment it was backfilled, placed his trust in his construction workers, without a design executed and supervised by an engineer. This is just one such avoidable and costly catastrophe. The operator at the water treatment plant whose plant suffered a total shutdown due to a ground-fault failure event, because the electrical protective devices were not properly coordinated by an engineer, is yet another example. The business owner, who had decided to expand his operation and belatedly discovered that the cost of the electrical infrastructure needed to support this expansion is unaffordable, as the earlier electrical distribution system was not designed by an engineer but rather installed by an electrician, lacking expansion capacity. Engineers bring value by ensuring designs have sufficient capacity for current and future needs. Thus, the failure to use design professionals can be costly.
The number one barrier to accepting the necessity of engineering consultancy is the fee. Clients usually focus on the magnitude of the fee proposal rather than the tasks outlined in it. A client’s first reaction to an engineering fee proposal, many times, is “This is expensive!” However, on careful analysis, it becomes clear that the cost of using engineering services, as a percentage of the project construction cost, is a mere 4%. The logical question that an engineer hopes a client would then ask is: “Can I afford NOT to use this professional input?”
Variations can and will occur on construction projects, whether or not there is a professional engineering input. However, the variations are significantly more costly to the client when incomplete designs are used in the absence of the required engineering services. As a consequence, clients are left with the only option of paying significant premiums during construction through variations.
Engaging consulting engineers from project conception through implementation delivers the best value for money.