Fair rate 1

[MakingAComeback]

Folks,

After nearly 34 years of a power generating station career I retired about a year and a half ago. Now my former employer would like to hire me through a third party to prepare and present specialized training to key operating personnel in several power plants. The subject matter would include familiarization with plant electrical protection systems, dealing with electrical contingencies, troubleshooting electrical happenings, and a wealth of related material based on my observations over many years of what these folks need to know.

My expenses will be paid. What do you think would be a fair rate of hourly compensation for this assignment?

 

[byrdj]

Two times original base.

 

[byrdj]

Plus remeber for every hour of class, there is two in prep.

 

[MakingAComeback]

That would make it in the $90 per hour range. Wonder if they would choke and gag or laugh if I asked for $100 per hour?

 

[MakingAComeback]

You are right about the prep time. Field trips will be made to the sites to gather facts to help in preparing. My time preparing will be paid for at the hourly rate.

 

[alehman]

If you are in the U.S., $100/hr is quite reasonable for experienced consulting engineers. Personally, I think it's too low!

 

[rbulsara]

Lets put it this way, along the line alehman said,
When one is getting paid say $40/hr. The company has to charge the clients about 3 times that that is say $120/hr. This covers costs of other benefits like medical, life insurance, professional liablity, overhead expenses like bills and cost for non billable staff, etc. When you are on your own you need to take that in to account, specailly the liability part.

On the other hand you may look at this as supplemental money, not really worried about overhead costs then $100 is OK but may be low, depending up on how much knowledge you are imparting and how much liability you are assuming.

 

[rbulsara]

The above multiplier of roughly 3 includes 10%-15% profit as well..

 

[rbulsara]

Also visit NSPE website, you may find some useful informatino there. Look for avearge salaries or compensation.

 

[rmw]

I think it is low, too.

And, are you going to bill "portal to portal"? That is, for all your travel time to and from your principal place of business to the plants where you will be teaching, and back or just for your time onsite.

You need to be paid for your travel time one way or the other, by billing for it, or by building it into your hourly rate while onsite.

And, you need to analyze whether or not this travel time will be during or before or after the normal 8 hr work day.

If you are onsite 8 hrs, and travelling two hrs before and two hrs after, that is a 12 hr work day, two of which are on overtime.

You need to take all that into consideration as to how you are going to be compensated for it.

Remember, that no matter what your formerly hourly rate was based on your salary at the company, your indirect costs (and some of the costs you are now going to have to cover for yourself, insurance-both health, life, AD&D, and professional liability, self employment taxes, unemployment taxes, etc., etc., are costs that the company had previously, but you did not see in your direct hourly rate.

Those costs were often significant, and they went on 24/7/52, (where as you aren't billing on the days you aren't performing the service) hence the reason that geezers are early outed, and the reason that companies are willing to pay what seems like an exorbitatant hourly rate to an employee returning for consulting.

Don't sell yourself short. If they could do this in house, they wouldn't be making you an offer.

rmw

 

[rmw]

I should have said "us geezers". No insult meant.

rmw

 

[MakingAComeback]

Several excellent points have been made.

More info for you:

Since I'm already on retirement health insurance and life insurance are already taken care of.

My overhead should be almost negligible. Will likely pawn off printing of instructional materials to the company.

I will not get paid for travel time, so the point about factoring it into the hourly rate makes good sense.

Have not thought about liability issues, but off hand I don't think it will be an issue for this situation. Will check further.

 

[itsmoked]

My 2 bits...

Often companies charge two rates. Maybe three for you.

1) Travel rate. Say $65 + expenses.
2) Services. Say $95.
3) Class time. Say $125.

How much? Clear and simple... That should depend a lot on how much you will enjoy this work. If you aren't going to enjoy this then the only thing you ARE going to enjoy is cashing the check... You must then charge enough to reach the happy rate.

If you will enjoy the work, keeping your fingers in the system, continuing to associate with fellow technical professionals then charge less.

 

[BigWallyB]

Itsmoked hit it right on. In the forging industry the "class time" figure for forgers is presently $150 (for "good" ones.)

Life is what happens while we're making other plans.

Wally

 

[Skogsgurra]

It may be interesting to know that I charge very close to USD 100 (SEK 750) per hour daytime and twice that for nights and holidays. I get paid for travelling and (sometimes) preparation. This is for emergencies as well as standard investigations. We are supposed to have low engineering costs compared to the US so you should probably have about twice that in the USA.

For teaching, I usually get an agreed sum for each attendee. Mostly we land on something that is very close to the 1 hour class + 2 hrs preparation mentioned by earlier posters.

Also, I have a "sea-rescue" clause saying No cure - No pay but, if we succeed, we get double pay. Many customers agree to that - lots of gamblers in Sweden and the construct is also a guarantee that I leave no roads untrodden. The No Pay means that customer only pays travel expenses and hotel, but no hours.

I think that you - with a lot of expertise in your field, that your customer really needs - should have those USD 100, at least. Just look to see what an "Education Company", without the same intimate knowledge of this plant that you have, would charge. They would probably not start anything below 5000 - 10000 USD. That's what it takes to prepare material for a site if you have to do it without prior knowledge. On top of that, they will need a fee for the class activities.

But, if you like to do this and like to meet people and think that it would be a nice change and also an opening for other assignments - then there are no other guides than your own feeling.

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

 

[ScottyUK]

Consultants rates in the UK power industry are in the £500 - £700 per day for 'real expertise' where the engineer in question has knowledge that only a handful of people possess. They're actually good value for money because these guys were trained when our industry was fatter and could afford luxuries like R&D and group specialists in generators, turbines, transformers, etc. Now the industry has changed and the former specialists are almost all one-man-band consultants. They're getting rich and taking their expertise, quite literally, to the grave. Meanwhile the industry dumbs down year after year.

Your $100/hour rate sounds pretty reasonable - but book all your time at that rate, or up it a little and establish a split rate system where you "under-charge" for prep and "over-charge" for class. That looks good in the eyes of the unknowing.



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

One day my ship will come in.
But with my luck, I'll be at the airport!