Consultants

[red-beard]

How do you get your jobs?

Advertising? Cold Calling?

I have an established corporation and I'm adding engineering consulting.

[Willem Fick]

Word of mouth. Having a good network of people in your chosen field/market is however crucial for this. If they can't get you into the door, they can often provide you with enough info to pull off a cold call to someone that can.

[MotoSook]

A long time ago I got a call from a contract engineering firm that wanted me to fill a position for one of their clients under contract through them after they saw my resume on Monster. At about the same time, that client contacted me directly....and that's how I got into consulting (oil and gas).

Career Builder is another place where you'll see a lot of Houston firms post positions. Go looking where the big boys look...the candidates go there too...the ones that really know how to find a job anyhow.

There may also be engineers at operating companies who are looking to make a change and get out of the day to day operations....but you have to be careful not to steal from your clients.



Before I left consulting, the firm I was with had a difficult time finding qualified engineers to help with the work load. There are a lot of engineers out there, but few are of the consulting caliber IMO. If you have enough of those (narrow focused engineers with little actual experience) you can make it work, but then the salary load cuts into the margin and you start logging a lot of hours on a client's time without producing quality work. It's surprising to me that consulting firms can survive with mediocre engineers on staff....lots of loading on project managers and those engineers who do know what to do.

Now that I'm not at the consulting firm, and with an operating company....I see even more bad engineering by other firms. Industrial designs used for oil and gas facilites? Not efficient. Just terrible stuff.

We have engineering specs, and they just can't understand them or simply meet the spec without any thought to the operations of the facility...let alone longevity. The consulting firms are so lacking in knowledge (design and operations) that they allow the venders to effectively design facilities for them. The engineers and project managers then just become conduits for getting design on paper. I've noticed this since I got into the industry, but it's worst now because companies don't have engineering departments anymore and they rely too much on consulting firms.

It's a shame, and I'm quick to jump on venders who come in to present their latest ware with 1/2 or less of the technical knowledge they should have to sell the product. They pass it off as an engineered solution, and the less knowing design engineers and project managers jump right onboard. In the operating world, they do this to our techs and field folks..or engineers with less experience. I love busting those venders.

Anyhow...take from it what you will...make sure you hire qualified people, esp. as you start out...make sure you don't become the consulting firm that's cursed by techs and operators because you put something out there that was poorly designed or that you recommended a poor solution. Be sure your engineers consult the techs and operators...then give them what they want. The solutions that work best are the ones that the operators actually appreciate!

[jhynesrockmtn]

Selling is relationships and having quality consultants. I've been part of a successful IT project and finance consulting firm here in the NW and they had a nice model that gave leaders equity, "staff" got high hourly pay, benefits and flexible schedules. They made it nice for those who wanted to work say 9 months of the year and then take time off in between gigs or for say the ski season. For example, we had a highly ranked amatuer golfer on the consulting staff. She took summers off to play tournaments and worked her (** off during the rest of the year to pay for it. Build one client at a time, get established at those clients so you are the go to firm by giving them the best combo of price and quality. This may not work as well in engineering, I don't know. In many ways it was more of a high quality contingent staffing model vs. true consulting.

[Rick Lee]

Next question. How do you consultants detrmine your billing rate and billable hours? I think I would have no problem identifying clients, as a lot of them don't want to hire staff, but can't handle the workload on their own. But how to bill? Just hourly or also costs x 1.3? I think a lot of PR firms mark up their vendors' bills by 30% and pass them back to their clients. If I could keep my identity secret to some extent, I could even stay in my current job, get a 30% discount for my clients, just bill them full price and keep that 30% for myself. Of course, I'd be canned and maybe sued if my company found me out.

[MotoSook]

Large jobs are usually bidded on and prices vary based upon who, how much work, when and what the current work load is. On smaller jobs, a general service agreement with the client or potential client will have a schedule of rates (most are industry common values)...some of the hourly $ can be as high as 3X pay if the position is critical and in high demand.

[jhynesrockmtn]

In our business, which as I mentioned was really more of a highly skilled contingent staffing model it was straight hourly rate to the client. We would undercut the big firms like Accenture and hire away their senior folks who would be working 60-80 hours a week for a salary of say $120k per year. We'd pay them an hourly rate that would get them the same pay working 40-50 hours per week, bill them at say $130 per hour and make a good margin. Their same rate from Accenture to the client would have been over $200 per hour. Win/Win.

The keys were, hire really good people who are at a stage in their life where they want a better work/life balance but still get a charge out of doing good/challenging work and know what client service means. Give the ones who want to move up, sell and make more money the opportunity. Get out of their way. Value the staff who just want to do a good job and don't care about titles or climbing the ladder.

We had contracts that protected us against our clients hiring away our folks. If they did, we got a placement fee from the deal.

[stomachmonkey]

It's not who you know.

It's who knows you.

Has served me well my entire life.

[sammyg2]

LOL, there's an old joke:
A consultant is someone who knows 100 ways to make love but doesn't know any women"

[serge944]

Relationships are key. Successful consultants don't have to look for work.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Relationships, word-of-mouth and customer service are keys. Virtually all professional commissions are based on either repeat business or referral. Marketing/advertising counts for very, very little (although you do have to be able to put a good face forward to a prospective client and sometimes a little slick marketing helps with that).

Any word on adding a design and construction management services division yet?