<p>i always hear about management consulting but not engr. consulting.Does anyone have any info on this? Any engineering consulting firms?I've looked on google but have found nothing.</p>
<p>There are lots of consulting engineering firms. Among them are Bechtel, and Kellogg Brown and Root. They tend to hire engineers with 5 or more years of experience.</p>
<p>There are tons and they generally require you to know your ****. Unlike normal consultants.</p>
<p>Some consulting firms will hire you right out of school, I saw several from Purdue do this. Consulting seems to be a popular choice for top students. It provides a good salary and constantly changing work.</p>
<p>Do engineering consultants get bonuses? Are there salary figures that you can share with me? Are work hours as insane as hours for business consultants?</p>
<p>hmm...i didn't find anything on consultants.</p>
<p>a consultant would not go to work for fewer dollars than a straight up employee. Unless he wasn't able to do math now would he/she? Consulting isn't a degree therefore one must extrapolate that in each degree specialty there would be opportunity for consulting. The consultants that I personally know are Civil/Industrial Liquid Waste/Remediation/lots of consulting. Expert witness/design/municipal/industrial management.....unlimited opportunity.</p>
<p>I do EE consulting as a PE on an independent basis to a two companies (pretty much exclusive arrangements, which is probably a better setup than most consultants achieve). However, I'm not sure if this is the perspective you're coming from....I've got about 25 yrs experience, and formed my own company to have an umbrella under which to do the consulting. It's now only a "sideline" to other endeavors. I believe some of the companies cited above probably do hire fresh graduates to perform consulting activities for the benefit of other companies, but in this sense the "employees" of Bechtel, etc. are just W-2 employees - they're not consultants in the true sense of the word. Example differences: (1) You don't set your own hours; (2) You don't set your own rates; (3) You don't selectively choose your work; (4) You probably DO HAVE health insurance; (5) Your liability coverage is under big brother's policy; (6) You (personally) don't need a PE, although a few select staffers will have PE licenses, especially in the civil arena; (7) You can be fired; (8) The company you work for can/will gain/lose work and you CAN BE rightsized at a moments notice.</p>
<p>Probably the biggest frustration people experience in the big firms is when they see that their services are being billed at $110.00 per hour, and they're taking home gross pay of $25.00 per hour; plus benefits worth perhaps another $10.00 per hour. However, in fairness to the client companies, they see some of that upcharge as "insurance" because if a major job gets screwed up, they will have substantial recourse against Bechtel, whereas they will have little recourse against a true independent consultant operating out of his garage. It's an interesting equilibrium.</p>
<p>For the companies I consult for, there is great mutual trust; the jobs are relatively "low liability"; they get a substantial discount relative to the $110.00 guesstimate above, etc.</p>
<p>25 years of experience. Thats a long time. How did you get the money to set up your own company? Was it expensive?</p>
<p>I'm 46 YO, so the 25 years kinda falls out of that age. As far as setting up a consulting company, I'm sure I spent less than $1000 to setup an "S" Corp. I do my own taxes and administration. As an engineering consultant, unless you're in an industry that requires a lot of specialized equipment, setting up a company is not a big expense.</p>
<p>But, you simply can't get independent consulting work in the "youth" of your career, because it's your experience base that sets your attractiveness to the prospective companies. When Bechtel claims a bunch of experience when quoting a consulting contract, they're able to make corporate-wide claims, not necessarily aligned to specific engineers. However, usually before a consulting contract is let, the quote package is required to include resumes on the key personnel who will work on the contract -- it is definitely not just a "low bidder wins" type of arrangement. The client companies are shopping consulting work for usually one or more of three reasons: (1) They lack the job-specific in-house expertise, or completely lack engineering resources, (2) In-house resources are fully utilized, and they do not foresee sufficient longevity to hire more people, (3) They want an entity to blame if/when something goes wrong on a high-liability endeavor. Examples include department of defense and aerospace types of work. Sometimes even the big companies like Bechtel will hire independent consultants on a case basis, because a job being quoted requires skills only available from outside the company. It is often true that independent consulting is a very specialized trade; for example, you might be a bridge foundation specialist who is an expert on sand footings on underwater applications. You might potentially be one of only a dozen such specialists in the whole country.</p>