Its not just structural engineering - this has been the situation here in western Canada for the last 2 decades and it is getting worse. Locally, some consultants are being bought up by larger corporations, which then spawns what I call the "corporate refugees" in the form of the senior level Engineers and Techs who promptly go out and form their own small startup company, and compete for the same building services work that all the other small start-ups are grasping for, with the inevitable result that the consulting fees are getting lower and lower, yet the amount of expected and required work to design and build a project is increasing exponentially with the electronic age and the ever increasing Client demands for "perfection" in a fast-tracked design-build and sequentially tendered project delivery process.
Our industry here is based on fixed engineering fees for unknown open ended amounts of work. How professional is that? The normal market practice here is to provide fixed fees for building services design, yet we are continually exposed to a large amount of scope creep with the number of design and drawing changes caused by inexperienced architects as well as third parties to the project who create more work (LEED Consultants, Building Inspectors, Contractors substituting specified equipment and systems then expect the consultant to solve the resulting problems...)
It's a death spiral - low fees equal less remuneration to staff, equals less people to attract into the industry, equals less expertise and ability to do any designs other than "drafting service" level performance to meet Building Code minimum requirements. Quality and Innovation requires intelligent well paid staff with the time to perform the innovative designs, and they aren't coming into this industry due to the low fees and sweatshop expectations that many Architects and Clients seem to expect.
While the odd panic to get some documents completed and meet a deadline is one thing, it gets a little tedious when it becomes the expected norm. I had one client tell me that a large document (200 pages of specs and drawings) was going to be uploaded to the FTP site by Friday morning, and could he please have my review responses by Sunday at 5:00PM to allow him to meet with the main Client on Monday morning.
And this goes on all the time in the age of instant communication, and the ease with which one can transfer drawings and documents around through the internet. This same instant gratification syndrome is also creating enormous document control issues, as well as the lack of drawing and design management by Architects who keep making changes right up to, and past tender dates, and issued for contruction dates, requiring a huge amount of time for us building services types to re-coordinate and revise all our drawings to allow the Contractor to actually build the thing. Can you say "RFI" and "Change Request"?
Working for Architects as Clients takes a full time effort to insure they can manage the project design process, and then get yourself paid - the common refrain is they will only pay the consultants after the Client pays them...usually resulting in anywhere from 3-4 months of unpaid invoices on an on-going basis. Basically I've learned that consultants are expected to finance the Client's project for them, be his construction manager (I haven't met many "construction managment companies" that actually does that very well), and our reward is the pride to assist the Client get his LEED plaque, or other building award, and maybe get paid for a fraction of all the extra time that was put into getting the project done.
