Global or Local Consulting Firm?

[ly05]

I started a thread regarding my humble observation of the current state of environmental consulting with my few years of experience -

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=131000

It seems to me that smaller firms may be more service orientated instead of concentrating a lot of their efforts in marketing. My goal is to do international work, and I currently work for a firm with international presence. My question for the experienced engineer here is - is it better for me to stay with an international firm? What is your experience with working with a smaller firm vs. a bigger firm in terms of work ethics, services to the clients, etc?

Thanks for any comments.

 

[zdas04]

As a rule international consultants are VERY expensive for the company hiring them. To be worth the high fees and extras you have to have something special. You say that you only have 5 years of experience, so you might find it really hard to get your foot into that door on your own.

If you have your heart set on international environmental engineering then you might want to stay where you are till you have 15-20 years experience in the field and get know a lot of folks who hire that service.

The alternative is to start a new firm (5 years experience is really marginal for that) focusing on domestic work until you get the requisite experience to be attractive to the international market.

David

[In case you didn't know it, you can reference another thread by putting in thread194-131000 ]

 

[IRstuff]

And, have the added benefit that the link will have a tooltip that tells you the forum and the title of the thread.

TTFN

 

[epoisses]

I believe there's no such thing as smaller firms being more service-oriented or having better ethics or worse.

Some people claim bigger firms are inherently better, if bigger means they grew faster than their competition. That doesn't tell you anything about the corporate culture, though. Companies tend to follow the laws of physics in the sense that mass is slow. Smaller companies tend to be more nimble.

Also, your job would probably be more versatile in a smaller company. If you like extracurricular activities like designing this year's Christmas card (I'm giving a real-life example), join a smaller company. If you don't like doing work that is not "yours" stick with the big one.

 

[BigH]

zdas04 may have missed the point - I don't believe that ly05 was wanting to be an independent consultant on the international stage - but rather an employee of a company doing international work so that he would have the opportunity of going overseas to work. I would suppose that the larger firms (see ENR's list of top 200 international consultants) would have a better presence on most international environmental projects but, again, I have seen small firms who made the push for international work get it. Too much international work now is going by the low price and the small firms may have an advantage there with lower overhead. But, for bigger jobs, I would stay with ENR listed firms.