×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Competitive Engineering Fees
8

Competitive Engineering Fees

Competitive Engineering Fees

(OP)
Hello,

Can someone tell me what the range is for competitive structural engineering fees and how it is broken down?

Best Regards,

Jim

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

It depends.

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

That's probably the most general question you could ask. There are engineers on here from all over the world, doing all types of projects, with all kinds of materials. Your question is like "how much does a car cost".

More details please?

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

2
$500 - $500,000 per project. Maybe more.

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

3
I estimate the value of the work and use a percentage to determine a fee
I estimate the number and type of drawings required and determine a fee
I estimate the actual work required to prepare the documents and determine a fee

I look at the three values, determine the economy, determine if there are other bidders, and determine if I want the work, and then, take a WAG...

Dik

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

I spend about two days a week creating beautifully worded quotes off of painstakingly detailed plan reviews only to have a salesman throw a random number on or take a random number off... Write a good, defensive, scope and then WAG.

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

3
We do similar to what dik suggests. Ours could be described:

1. Task takeoff -
Break down individual design tasks, meetings, travel, submittal reviews, etc. into small, manageable items and assign work hours to each item.
Calculate the personnel rates (those expected to do the work) times the hours and total the cost
Add direct expenses such as mileage, printing costs, etc.
Total the amount as the total design fee.

2. Percent of construction
This varies greatly from region to region and in different markets.
Basically there is a generally understood basic rate - such as 0.5% to 1.5% of the anticipated construction cost. In our area it seems to range between 0.5% to 0.75%.

3. By anticipated number of sheets
This takes some experience with your staff but you can slowly add records of how much time you spend on various sheets.
For structural you might keep records of how much time framing plans take, foundation plans, general note sheets, typical detail sheets, section sheets, etc.
For a project, estimate the number of each type of sheet you think will be provided and calculate the hours of each times the personnel rate.
You might even set up a range of values - so a foundation plan may take between X and Y hours depending on complexity.
Then when you estimate your hours you can assign a complexity factor to it to zero in on the best estimate for hours needed.

Once you have all three numbers above, your great, wonderful, imaginative, analytical engineering intuition kicks in and voila! You have your fee.

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

JAE... excellent added info...

If I get a star for my paltry 5 lines... you need one, too!

Dik

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

Okay, Dik & JAE both do what I (& a gazillion others) do, but Dik's obviously the best one at it. He gets the same fee for 5 lines that the rest of us put 5 paragraphs into.

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

shobroco - but, but, but, his overhead is way lower than mine.

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

Yeah, but he was the first to admit to putting it into context with competitive bidding and how bad he wants the work with the final sum being the WAG. That was the real clincher.

I sometimes do bids where I really think it will be a pain and therefore I mark up accordingly with the "pain and suffering" fees for good measure. Strange how I get these anyway. Maybe my pain and suffering just ain't worth enough yet... Truth is, sometimes you won't get hired unless you make it worth more. Humans are strange creatures, ahem, unlike us engineers.

______________
MAP

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

I was impressed with JAE's, "Once you have all three numbers above, your great, wonderful, imaginative, analytical engineering intuition kicks in and voila! You have your fee."

That really sums it up...

Dik

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

Some people may not like this but in addition to the above, I also look at the client to see if they are going to want to negotiate the fee. If so, I will add a % to the overall contract so they can take it out later on. Not great business but better than nothing.

I had one client a few weeks ago, an architect, take 5% out of my contract before he submitted it to his client w/o me knowing. Then he complained to me that the owner wanted him to cut his fee by 5%. He didn't seem to mind cutting 5% from my contract, but when it came time for him to take a cut he wasn't happy.

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

I am lucky that our services do not fall within the the architect's fee. We work on an hourly rate basis only. I am available to our client to estimate the engineering required or to discuss alternatives that may be suggested. But, we are a specialized design service, and all firms are not created equally. I make no effort to be the least expensive, but have every intention of providing the best service. In our experience low bid estimates focus an engineering firms attention on providing the most information possible for the least number of man-hours. What is sacrificed is fabrication, erection, and construction economy. Saving a little on engineering can cost thousands on the larger ticket items. This can be a long debate on economies and actual engineering value. I feel for you guys working on commercial project within the architect's fee.

Ultimately "competitive engineering fees" will depend on your market and degree of service you can provide.

www.FerrellEngineering.com

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

from my experience working on proposals for the sales geniuses ...
We normally would just take a look a the project, try to come up with what we thought was a reasonable number of drafting hours and engineering hours then threw about $65/hr for drafting and $85-$110 per hr at the engineering.
If the work was drawing heavy, we tried to sell the whole job based on the number of drawings....20 dwgs x $X per dwg = total.
Keep in mind this was only used for smaller projects.

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

OK, I give up - in the UK a WAG is a 'wife and girlfriend' usually in relation to a footballer.

Somehow I do'nt think we are on the same wavelength - please put me out of my misery.

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

I do think they are referring to that peculiar American expression representing the highly technical method of estimating, the "Wild-A$$ Guess"

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

'Wild A$$ Guess' or 'Wife and Girlfriend'... dunno, but, I'd suggest they were pretty much the same...

Dik

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

@dik...not sure if they are the same, but mixing the concepts of the expressions could be more fun and/or interesting than either concept alone. :p

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

Hoaokapohaku: thank you - WAG is therefore similar to the UK practice of 'sucking in of breath' or for the more technological advanced the 'placing of a digit in the air'.

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

I have also heard these guesses called "extruded values"....I'll let you guess.

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

Also: SWAG = Sophisticated WAG

RE: Competitive Engineering Fees

@jimodore: You are very welcome, and thank you for elucidating the finer points of UK estimating practices.

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources