Freelance Hourly Rate - Design Engineer (UK)

[AeroNucDef]

Hi all

I'm sending off my CV to a company for a freelance mechanical engineer design position here in the UK. I've never done much freelance work before, so I need to find out about hourly rates (money). I realise that there's going to be many different rates for different jobs, but what should I realistically say as a rate?

I've got all the right skills & experience that the company is looking for.

The job involves Mech/Machine/Production/Product design using CAD, and also doing FEA.

Any help is much appreciated.

 

[ajack1]

What do you class as freelance? Do they pay holidays, provide NI contributions, provide hardware and software etc?

It very much depends on the industry as you say but somewhere between £15-£45/ hour is I believe the going rate for CAD/ FEA. You might even struggle to get near the top end of that in the current economic climate.

 

[KENAT]

There's a big pay difference between CAD guys and good Stress Guys that use FEA as a tool. If you're just an FEA monkey then you'd be closer to the CAD end of the pay range unless you bluff the employer or they are too stupid to realize the difference.

The range ajack gives sounds about right. It's been a little while since I was in the UK and the bottom end for CAD guys could be a little lower then but that's inflation for you. I think I remember higher for some stress guys but as ajack says, in this economy maybe not.

As he points out, if you're completely freelance then unless things have changed you need to make allowance for paying tax, vacations, any retirement or other benefits you'd normally expect an employer to give and, if this is you long term plan, you need to be taking in enough extra to cover spells between contract gigs.

Back in 2004 I was charging 15 pounds but I wasn't looking at it as a long term thing, if I had been I'd have been looking at 20 or more to make it competitive with what my immediately previous direct pay had been.

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[ScottyUK]

I'd expect electrical CAD guys with design capability to be in the £35/hr region. 'Design' being general low voltage stuff for the industrial sector. Not sure how much that helps with your area of expertise, but the good electrical designers were roughly on the same rate as the good piping guys.

Location plays a part too - those rates are for the North East: expect about 50% better in London and to be worse off overall.


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If we learn from our mistakes I'm getting a great education!

 

[AeroNucDef]

Hi ajack. I will provide my own CAD/FEA hardware & software, also I will do most of the work from home, with site visits. They don't pay holidays or NI, I have to sort all that out. They pay any expenses like fuel and accommodation.

I'm going to look at between £25-35 p/h, depending on assignment, length of job and so on.

 

[Ron]

Guys!! You're selling yourselves too cheaply. Keep in mind that an established company will charge somewhere between 3 and 4 times your salary. When you are working independently, keep the rate near that, if a bit lower.

Let's assume your goal is to make 75,000 pounds per year (sorry, I don't have the "pound" symbol on my keyboard). Then you will want charge about 75.00 to 100.00 pounds per hour. Your competitors are probably charging 125.00 pounds per hour, however they disguise it.

 

[GregLocock]

I wouldn't pay someone 75 to 100 pounds per hour (150-200 A$) for CAD/FEA, simply because CAD/FEA sounds like he's hitting the automesh button on an integrated CAD/FEA package. We certainly don't pay FEA analysts to do CAD, generally.


Cheers

Greg Locock

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[TPL]

As a guide, a year has 228 working days (365 less, 104 days of weekend, 8 days public hols and 25 days holiday): this corresponds to 1824 working hours. Divide what you think your target salary should be by 1824 to get an hourly rate and then work from there. GBP50k/year corresponds to GB27.4/hr - better check my sums

Does the job guarantee 40hrs/week or is there dead time between contracts?

Unless you rely solely on NI, you uwill need to factor in private pension contribution. Can you exploit any tax breaks? What about any wear and tear on your car? Will you need any sort of liability insurance?

 

[ajack1]

Iwonafish I would say under those circumstances that is probably slightly on the low side, however times are very tough, it is easy to be the highest charging guy in the dole queue.

Ron I do not know where about in the world you are that doesn’t have a £ sign on the keyboard but it must be a far better place than where I am.

At least in automotive in the UK if you asked £100/ hour (158$US) for a contract CAD designer you would have to pick the guy up off the floor and try to stop him laughing hysterically.

 

[Crompto29]

2 years ago in a huge engineering management company in London (Oil Industry) I was one of 50 pressure vessel design engineer contractors. Our hourly rates were £30-£50/hr. Absolutely everything was supplied by them. And then our agents were getting £10/hr.

Good Solidworks contractors were on £35/hr.

Not using an agent:

I imagine today in the oil industry an average FEA Engineer would get £55/hr with the company supplying everything.

CAD/FEA person would be at a guess £40-£50 with company supplying everything.

No holidays or benefits.

All depends on demand. Start high and work your way down.

 

[AeroNucDef]

ajack1 your right about being on the low side, and as you mentioned, I can't price myself to highly in a recession.

Ron, £75-100 p/h seems quite high even in good times. You would probably get that working offshore as an engineer or in a war zone (iraq, afghan...) but not sure about in the UK.

 

[GregLocock]

Most I heard of for CAD is around 90 dollars, most I know of for FEA is 250 dollars per hour. I think these days you'd be fairly happy with 60% of that.



Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[rowingengineer]

I'm with Ron on this, his numbers may be wrong, but the concept is right. I think you should charge yourself out at about 80% of what a company would charge. You should know this from previous positions.
Sure in this economy you might be inclined to reduce this to 60%, but what are you going to do when things pick up?

Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in mud. After a while you realize that them like it

 

[msquared48]

Rewmember too, that if you are freelancing, forget the holidays and vacations. The salary base is 40/52 for 2080 billable hours. That, in part, is why you can lower the bid - you don't have to pay employees for time off.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering

 

[KENAT]

Ron, I don't know if it's your $ to £ conversion but £75,000 would be very high for a decent stress engineer, let alone a CAD jockey.

The US to UK conversion is not simple because of the differences in tax structures, benefits, labor laws, market conditions etc. as well as the varying exchange rate.

In the early 2000's my UK aerospace/defense company was charging customers at between £35 to £45 an hour for Engineering depending on contract, mostly between 36 & 38 as I recall. For our industry we were on the low side as we were relatively small but this did give us a competative edge.

Obviously, we wouldn't have been paying a contractor that much as we still had to make a profit/cover some overheads.

Obviosly there's been 5 years of inflation since then but your figures are almost certainly absurdly high.

This was South of England but not London. Crompto29 numbers are in a higher cost area where there is a big pay difference and an (at the time) relatively high demand industry. I doubt you'd have got those numbers outside of London in other industries.

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[gwolf2]

If you are supplying the office and paying for the computers, CAD and FE software and travel to do review meetings, I would pitch in at £45-55/hour. This rate assumes significant analysis content to the work and the use of decent software.

 

[StructuresDan]

Afternoon chaps,

Have been sent a link to this thread from PeterStock. It seems very relevant to a thread I started in the Engineer Business Practices Forum.

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=257071&page=1

I guess the figures I had in mind were some way between Rons and iwonafish's. The daily rate I am currently looking at is between £500 - £550 per day but obviously this is negotiable on an individual contract basis (given the contract length).

Dan

 

[SiW979]

I work for a pretty big, well known engineering company and we use a lot of contractors for CAD they range between £22 -£28 dependending on which business unit they work for.

Best regards

Simon NX4.0.4.2 MP10 - TCEng 9.1.3.6.c - (NX6.0.3.6 MP2 native)

http://www.jcb.com

Life shouldn't be measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the number of times when it's taken away...

 

[Electic]

Two ways to look at rates, this experience is from a completely different market (pacific NW USA electrical engineering) but there might be some parallels:

The fellows with small offices boast that they earn $100 per hour, but only bill 60% of their time. Many of them have a wife with a good job.

The fellows with large offices bill $60 per hour, but for 100% of their time.

These rates are a few years out of date but you get the idea.