Structura1Engineer
Structural
- Aug 25, 2011
- 3
TLDR: What's a fair split of fees for a 1099 contractor? Licensed Engineer produces all the construction documents and engineering. Owner procures the jobs, stamps and reviews.
I'm a licensed Senior Structural engineer with 15 years of experience and started moonlighting on a part-time basis for a former colleague of mine who started their own small 1-person firm. He's too busy and asked if I would be interested in working on some of the excess jobs for him as a 1099 contractor. I provide my own drafting software and design tools, but I'm using his template for uniformity in design. This was similar work that I have done in the past and was able to get up to speed quickly and knocked out about 5 small jobs in a month.
We decided to do a fee split of 70/30 instead of going hourly. It's simpler and it seemed equitable that since I would be doing all the production that I would get the 70, and he gets the 30 for owning the business, finders fee, stamping, and a little review time. But when I went to submit my invoices, it turns out, he thought I had proposed he gets the 70 and I got the 30, which was quite the miscommunication! I had already requested a formal contract in writing prior to this, which was something he was working on, but we were still in the feeling each other out phase of any working relationship.
We disagree that the engineer doing production should get the higher number of the percentage, but I wanted to pole other engineers on what is fair. Are there any market salary reports that cover this specific area of consulting engineering fee splits? I usually just see salary reports which isn't helpful here.
I'm a licensed Senior Structural engineer with 15 years of experience and started moonlighting on a part-time basis for a former colleague of mine who started their own small 1-person firm. He's too busy and asked if I would be interested in working on some of the excess jobs for him as a 1099 contractor. I provide my own drafting software and design tools, but I'm using his template for uniformity in design. This was similar work that I have done in the past and was able to get up to speed quickly and knocked out about 5 small jobs in a month.
We decided to do a fee split of 70/30 instead of going hourly. It's simpler and it seemed equitable that since I would be doing all the production that I would get the 70, and he gets the 30 for owning the business, finders fee, stamping, and a little review time. But when I went to submit my invoices, it turns out, he thought I had proposed he gets the 70 and I got the 30, which was quite the miscommunication! I had already requested a formal contract in writing prior to this, which was something he was working on, but we were still in the feeling each other out phase of any working relationship.
We disagree that the engineer doing production should get the higher number of the percentage, but I wanted to pole other engineers on what is fair. Are there any market salary reports that cover this specific area of consulting engineering fee splits? I usually just see salary reports which isn't helpful here.
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