Career Advice - Commercial/Residential 2

[Ashke15]

Hello fellow engineers. I'm here seeking some perspective and/or advice on career paths in the field of structural engineering. I'll try to make this as short as I can.

I feel that I am currently at a crossroads in my engineering career. For the first 8 years of my career I worked at a small firm in SoCal that only did engineering for residential structures (90% custom homes and 10% small multi-family). I quit three years ago to start my own firm doing the same type of residential work. I am extremely detail-oriented (I LOVE drawing construction details, probably too much) and I am a perfectionist, so with each year that goes by I feel less and less cut out for residential work. There are many things about residential work that gnaw at my perfectionism: the magical load paths we often use, the inability to mathematically prove that many of the standard residential construction methods actually work, contractors not even looking at my plans, being asked to approve wild deviations from the plans that can't be easily remedied, the list goes on. I have a notion that most if not all of these annoyances would disappear if I was involved in commercial/education/industrial work instead of residential. However, I haven't had any experience at all in those areas so maybe I'm way off....which brings me to my next point...

As I said, I've only done residential work up to this point of my career. IMO I am the best in my geographical area when it comes to that type of work due to my obsession with detail. BUT...I don't feel like a REAL engineer since I only do residential. SEAOC hosts conferences that I attend to maintain my license, but the vast majority of what they talk about there goes way over my head. They talk about huge and amazing projects that they worked on. They rarely talk about residential concerns because, well...that's a lesser kind of engineering, it's not REAL engineering. These conferences are always depressing for me because it makes me feel incompetent in my own field, a field I've been in for 11 years! If I was asked to engineer even just a simple, 5-story rectangular office building...yeah there's no way I could do that. I'm not experienced with that type of construction, I don't know what kind of software would be used for such a project, I wouldn't know how to use the software anyway, and I've got no one checking my work. All of that makes me sad.

So right now I am grappling with two trains of thought that I am sure are not 100& true, and maybe aren't even half true.
THOUGHT 1: Residential work is a joke. It's pseudoscience. It's FAKE engineering and it's LAME. My obsession with detail is a complete waste since the other guys aren't doing it, and no one will appreciate it except for me. I should be embarrassed to be a residential engineer.
THOUGHT 2: Commercial work is REAL engineering and it's EXCITING. It's mathematically provable. My attention to detail would be appreciated. I would feel pride in the projects that I work on.

Besides the actual work itself, everything about working for myself has been great: Being my own boss and working the hours that I want. Ideally I wish I could keep doing what I'm doing and learn REAL engineering on my own. But I don't think it's possible to learn how to do it on my own. I feel like I'd need to go work at a big firm to learn the construction, the software, and the process. That would mean giving up everything I've worked to build up for myself.

Do any of you who have worked in both commercial and residential engineering have any thoughts on this? Do any of you who run your own firm have any thoughts? Is my perfectionism and dissatisfaction with the pseudoscience of residential engineering better suited for commercial work? Is commercial work actually mind-numbingly boring as a couple of my friends have told me? Is it worth bailing on my own firm to work at a big firm that engineers fancy arenas and office buildings? When they have the grand opening of the new basketball arena that I helped work on will I feel pride in it, or will it be just another project I worked on? I know that you can't possibly answer all of these questions for me, but I would love to hear your thoughts and the wisdom of your experience. Thank you so much for your time.

 

[WARose]

If you like what you are doing and you make the money you want....why not stick with it? Hell, if contractors are ignoring your drawings...that's even better: it's on them if something goes wrong.

The fact is: commercial work can be quite a grind. Low budgets, working with architects, crazy schedules, etc, etc. I own my own company and I specifically avoid commercial and residential. (I do all industrial.)

 

[TheDW]

I started in commercial for ~3 years and have been doing mostly residential for ~5.

I prefer residential. I didn't feel like much of an engineer spending weeks on end fiddling with whatever FEM program we were using for a project (felt like a 'modelling tech' at times), or spending days compiling and formatting a calc package.

Personally, I also like smaller projects because I can more easily mentally keep track of the entirety of the project...I feel better knowing I looked at everything myself, instead of hoping Jim next cube over took his part of the design seriously and didn't miss anything.

There is something to be said about being proud of the end result of a big project. But the better paychecks and much better hours make up for it, for me personally.

 

[Ashke15]

If you like what you are doing and you make the money you want....

Well part of what I'm saying is that I'm not sure I like what I'm doing (residential work), and I'm wondering if I could like something else more (commercial work). I have no experience in commercial work and wanted to ask people's opinions before I just jump ship for something that I might actually hate.

I feel better knowing I looked at everything myself, instead of hoping Jim next cube over took his part of the design seriously and didn't miss anything.

Thanks for your input, this is very helpful!

 

[Lomarandil]

I agree with the general consensus I am reading into the other replies, I don't believe commercial work will be a significant enough difference in the ways you describe.

Other niches? Sure. Industrial, utilities, construction engineering, etc. But I think a lot of building engineering (excluding high-rise or high-lateral) will have similar characteristics (and some additional challenges).

 

[kissymoose]

This is a very familiar thought process to me, and I appreciate your thoroughness in spelling it all out. I don't have time to respond as much as I want to right now, but I do want to make the point that I have found a focus on choosing clients much more rewarding than choosing types of projects. At the end of the day, someone who values my work and opinion on my project, and compensates accordingly, is more valuable to me than being on a project that will get written up in Structures magazine or on AIA's list of the year. And then, I enjoy trying to increase my value to the client and just do the work that's required to get it back to them timely, as opposed to appeasing my perfectionism (e.g. "Terry Malone-ing" every house).

 

[Ashke15]

Thank you Lomarandil and kissymoose!

as opposed to appeasing my perfectionism (e.g. "Terry Malone-ing" every house)

I especially appreciated this. I bought a Malone book a while back and reading through it contributed to my feelings of not being a real engineer.

 

[phamENG]

kissymoose nailed it.

I feel much the same way. I did a lot of commercial and industrial starting out, and a little residential. Then I went to work for an industrial client. Then I went out on my own and I'm doing 95% residential now. I really don't like residential. Some of it is interesting, but I have the same frustrations you do.

But I'll never go back to working for somebody else. I'll work hard to try to get back to commercial (I'm a sucker for a steel building - not metal building foundations, but traditional steel design), but I won't sacrifice the work I've put into carving out a name for myself to go sit in somebody else's office again.

Your best bet: find a partner with that experience and go in together. If they can bring commercial clients and teach you, you can teach them residential, and the greater diversity in project markets will make your operation more resilient.

 

[Just Some Nerd]

The fact is: commercial work can be quite a grind. Low budgets, working with architects, crazy schedules, etc, etc.

For my own experience (a small firm, but at the point where we're no longer wanting to do any single dwellings) I find commercial typically quite easy to deal with compared to residential, at least when it comes to towers. Getting layouts for a residential building to work over a dozen stories is a lot harder and resource consuming than a commercial building which typically just sticks to the same grid layout with perhaps one transfer at ground floor to transition to the basement arrangement. Typically a lot more space to go around when it comes to fixing issues, rather than trying to change the layout of an apartment that was already sold based on a marketing plan that didn't reflect reality -_-

I feel better knowing I looked at everything myself, instead of hoping Jim next cube over took his part of the design seriously and didn't miss anything.

FWIW my firm requires internal verification of everything from coworkers not familiar with the particular project before issuing anything for construction, but I would definitely share that concern if we didn't have that system in place.

I have found a focus on choosing clients much more rewarding than choosing types of projects.

Definitely relate to this experience. The size or type of project almost doesn't matter in comparison to how absurd the demands from the builder/developer. If someone understands or prioritises structure, and won't try to haggle their way out of every minor inconvenience to them, everything goes much more smoothly and there's a lot less concern of things going wrong when minor change #435 becomes the straw that breaks the camel's back.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Why yes, I do in fact have no idea what I'm talking about

 

[jerseyshore]

I couldn't agree more with the comments about focusing on good clients over project type.

My experience is in both. Small firm I started at did all types of residential, commerical, steel wood masonry concrete all of it. Every day something different.

Now starting to work on my own it's obviously easier to get small residential projects early on. But I don't want to be pigeon holed into one thing. I like doing it all and don't want to "lose" that ability to do a steel building.

Complicated houses are a pain because it's a hassle to track loads down. But commerical often has ridiculous timelines and the project process is drawn out. Many of them have initial development stage, then preliminary framing, then finals, then you make a revision, then you're reviewing shops, then there's a field change, they go on for months.

With residential, you can give them a drawing on a Monday and the framer could be finished by Friday.

A balance is nice, but I don't think one is better than another. You have to take what you're good and efficient at and use that to your advantage.

 

[XR250]

I do about 90% residential but I find the 10% light commercial is the most interesting.

 

[RPGs]

I might be oversimplifying or misunderstanding, but I don't see why you would necessarily want to 100% jump ship from residential to being EOR of multi-story buildings. Surely there is some way to test the waters and get into smaller commercial work on existing structures and see if you can establish some repeat clientele? I think you're dead-on that your attention to detail will be valued there.

 

[MotorCity]

Captain Obvious here, but I think the size of your firm is proportional to the size of your projects.

So a sole proprietorship or partnership is only capable of handling smaller projects like residential or light commercial.

If you desire to work on larger projects, you necessarily will have to work at a larger firm that has the capacity to take on larger projects. There may be a unicorn, one man operation out there that has worked on a 10 story building, but somebody please speak up if you are aware of such a case.

To me it seems to be a very clear fork in the road: work for yourself on smaller projects, or work for someone else on larger projects. It just comes down to what you personally value more.

 

[phamENG]

Third fork: grow your operation (ensuring new members have necessary skills and experience) and become the larger shop that can do larger projects.

But regardless of size, I would take a one or two story steel framed office building over a massive, complex, wood framed house any day.

 

[XR250]

I would take a one or two story steel framed office building over a massive, complex, wood framed house any day.

For sure

 

[kissymoose]

but somebody please speak up if you are aware of such a case

I think dik has said he used to design such sizes of projects and even play architect when he first started out back in the dino ages. I feel like the AEC industry has changed a lot in the last few decades and I'm not sure there's many developers who would go with a sole proprietorship anymore for larger projects.

 

[phamENG]

I don't know. I got a call about a potentially large project (two large multifamily buildings) yesterday. Whether or not the client is fully aware of my company's size remains to be seen, but he knows I qualify as "small" (part of the reason he called, actually).

Whether or not I get them in the end also remains to be seen. Biggest problem is cash flow, of course. Unless I can negotiate a monthly payment scheme where I get to bill 20%/month for a 3 month design development schedule and a final lump sum at completion, I might have trouble keeping the lights on if (ha - when) the schedule runs long.

 

[Ashke15]

Thanks all for your thoughts, I really appreciate it.

work for yourself on smaller projects, or work for someone else on larger projects. It just comes down to what you personally value more.

Yeah so what I'm getting at is that I only have experience with smaller projects so I don't know the other side is like. And I don't think I can really know what the other side is like unless I give up what I'm doing on my own. I like the suggestion by some of you to partner with another engineer who has experience on some larger projects, though I'm not sure why another engineer would be interested in partnering with me.

phamENG, interesting that residential is 95% of your work but you don't enjoy it. Maybe I just need to adjust my attitude and expectations of what my career should be. I would like it to be something that provides a living for my family AND is intellectually stimulating AND fills me with a sense of pride, but maybe it can't be all of those things. Regarding feeling a sense of pride, I do take pride in the quality of my work (the plans, the detailing, etc.), but I don't take pride in the math behind it all. To me the "math" in residential engineering is often dubious at best.

 

[phamENG]

To me the "math" in residential engineering is often dubious at best.

I actually disagree here. I get it, most budgets don't really allow us time to dive deep. BUT...the math is there and adds up for the most part. Sure, some of it boils down to applying values from test results - but that's okay. Most of the equations in the steel manual and other design documents are based at least in part on a best-fit curve or other derivation from the empirical data.

On your next moderate project (nothing too crazy, but something that will require a little thinking), blow your budget. Save up if you need to so you can cover the cash flow, but take twice as much time and go nuts on calculating everything. You can. Do a detailed wind or seismic analysis, apply those loads carefully to your walls and diaphragms. Trace the load through every link in the load path. Detail the connections. Then, compare them to what it would be if it were done prescriptively.

This will do two things:
1) Satisfy you that there is actual engineering to be done in complex residential.
2) Help you to see that ignoring some of it really is okay.

This will NOT do something important to both of us:
Make residential contractors care or even realize that the S-sheets exist.

 

[milkshakelake]

I'll echo the sentiment that commercial and mid size work comes with a lot of the same headaches, like contractors not following drawings and asking (practically forcing) you to adapt to their nonconformances. I don't have that much experience with large scale stuff like high rises, but they have their own share of headaches like needing a large team, having weekly meetings that are so boring that you want to shoot yourself, and hundreds to thousands of shop drawings. On the plus side, large scale stuff will follow your drawings and building code exactly.

90% of my work is multifamily or commercial and 10% is residential. I do not like the residential parts. The owners are picky and difficult, and the pricing is low for the amount of work. In my area, as weird as it sounds, the number of hours is not that much different designing a 2 story house or an 8 story building. A lot of the work is the same, especially in foundations and support of excavation. Residential is actually harder in a lot of cases because there's no magic software for it, besides the typical offerings from Woodworks, and also due to Malone's famous/infamous book.

But I'll never go back to working for somebody else. I'll work hard to try to get back to commercial (I'm a sucker for a steel building - not metal building foundations, but traditional steel design), but I won't sacrifice the work I've put into carving out a name for myself to go sit in somebody else's office again.

I'm in the same boat. Even if I had to spend the rest of my life doing small residential, I'd rather do that than work under somebody on bigger, more engineer-y projects. I can't stand working under someone else's misguided notions and lack of regard to science and engineering, or crappy employee management. That's not to bash anyone not working solo or running their own company; it's just my own preference, and something I can relate to.

In terms of wanting to do something more engineer-y, and not feeling like a real engineer, rest assured that residential is real engineering. It's full of challenges that a high rise designer couldn't solve. It's not a lesser engineering field. When you go to those conferences and people talk about massive, exciting projects they're doing, there's usually a team of engineers and drafters doing that with one person at the top. The person at the top is either a partner who does the business part of it, which is exciting but not engineer-y, or a senior engineer getting paid a salary, which is nice and prestigious but probably gets paid about as much as you do with your residential projects.

I hope this doesn't sound too jaded, but I've learned to divorce my ego from my finances a long time ago. If a house inspection is paying the bills moreso than a large project, I will do that all day, any day. After all, I'm in this for the money. The interesting parts were mostly over in the first 7 years when I learned a new, grand idea weekly. Even if you switch to larger scale projects, it becomes repetitive after a while. Of course, there's also incremental, lifelong learning, but that initial excitement is temporary. That being said, I did become very versatile by learning lots of different types of construction (steel, concrete, CMU, CFS, etc) before starting my own firm, which helped. But I wouldn't hate my life if I just knew wood and could make money from that. Hell, I do completely non-engineer-y stuff to make extra bucks (vibration monitoring, preconstruction surveys, litigations, etc).

Fourth fork: become a developer. Make some money and get into real estate. Build your own stuff. Use that awesome residential knowledge to make some big bucks! That's my end goal myself.