I've been doing PCAs for the past 17 years and have rarely used pre-survey questionnaires. You learn much more about a building by sitting down with the building engineer/maintenance manager and interviewing him/her about the condition and maintenance history of the property. This allows you...
At the end of the day, it will all come down to what you and the new Principal think is fair and reasonable. I "bought" into my firm by simply not taking a salary for several months. Our firm was only a year old, so we worked it out so that my "buy-in" would be about the same as I would spend...
Have you discussed your concerns with your boss? I would ask for a meeting and tell him/her that you would like to be a salaried employee of the firm. If you've done excellent work up to now and have had a positive helpful attitude, they should see you as someone worth investing in as long as...
Add up all of your expected costs for a Year, add your gross salary, then add 7.65% of your gross salary for the employers half of FICA. Your net billings would have to equal that number. Then back-calculate out how many hours that is and at what rate. Like others have said, 50% of your time...
I'll start out by saying that I agree with what everyone has said, have never offered a garauntee, and can't imangine a situation where I would. Having said that, I'd like to throw this out there...can you have the client pay you to do enough initial investigation and preliminary design to make...
One of the issues with having folks work for you on a 1099 basis is that some E&O insurance policies will not cover you for that project if something happens. Many policies require you to only use insured subcontractors, so if these folks don't have their own policies, you may find yourself...
Sam,
Rather than working for your former employer on a contract (1099) basis, why not just work for them as a part-time-as-needed employee? They would have you on payroll as they always have and you would be a W2 employee and covered by their insurance as you always have been. You can...
Other than our website, we don't do any advertising. All of our work has come from existing relationships, referrals, or people we meet through networking.
Find a couple of local associations or groups where your clients or potential clients are members, attend the meetings, and network...
We use Quickbooks Pro, which works good enough for a small firm. It allows you to set up clients, projects, vendors, different bank accounts, do online banking (this is A LOT easier than writing checks), track credit card expenses, employee time, employee expenses, AR, AP, Open Sales, and many...
We went through this a few years ago when we were starting out and our biggest surprise came from our insurance carrier.
Make sure you check with your liability insurance carrier before deciding if this will be a subconsultant or an employee relationship. Many carriers require that...
Are there any simple "rules of thumb" that can be used to approximate the value of a small engineering consulting business? This would be used specifically for selling or awarding shares of the company to employees.
Thanks,
Pete Madson
www.npcg.net