Engineering Firm Startup Question (Structural) 3

[SWEG]

To all those who have started their own structural (or other discipline for that matter) firms, at what point did you decide you were ready to transition to starting your own firm?

What aspects of design and consulting did you pursue? General consulting? Design only? Construction services? 

How did you handle cash-flow when you started out (i.e. when did you receive your first payment of services) and how did you resolve start-up capital? How long before you hired your first CAD operator? 

Thanks for any input you can provide!

 

[Ingenuity]

Thanks, Ron, for the detailed reply.

One further question: if your client's forensics project required a specialist consultant that you did NOT already have within your internal consortium, I guess you engage (or the client) them as a third-party external consultant, paid by client direct?

 

[Ron]

Ingenuity...that is correct. We rarely need that, but have done so in the past. Most recently we had client hire a mechanical consultant because of HVAC issues and also hired one for Fire Protection review, neither of which is within our group's capability. We don't hire them as subconsultants because we prefer to keep our group relatively intact as that allows us better quality assurance of what we produce.

 

[Ingenuity]

Sound reasoning.

How many (or how few) make up your associated consortium?

Don't worry - not trying to compete on your turf! Just my curiosity on how your setup works.

Thanks, Ron.

 

[Ron]

Ingenuity....no problem! We have 4 licensed professional engineers, 1 certified General Contractor, 1 certified Building Contractor and 1 building code certified technician. Only the engineers produce reports. The GC is also a certified documents technologist and she does all the initial document review for the litigation side. She is particularly adept at finding all the subs and breaking out their respective scopes of work on a project. That is useful when helping to assign responsibility for a particular design or construction defect. She usually does a better job at document coordination than the lawyer's office with which we work on a project.

All of the engineers went through our former employer's rather rigorous principal engineer's program, so we are relatively consistent in our review methodology and liability mindset. At some time in our careers, each of us has worked for the former employer. I was the longer term one at 18 years.

Feel free to contact me separately if you want additional info. Send an email to our general mailbox at

jax@woodsengineeringdotcom

and I'll get back to you directly.