What Is a Consulting Engineer?
And why would I need one?
Your company manufactures equipment used in the cereal and pasta
industries. As your clients make the corn flakes and spaghetti that fuel American
families, they rely on you for machinery that is reliable, efficient and food-grade in
its design and construction. While all the materials in your equipment are considered
safe and industry-standard, you want to know more about how the zinc-plated steel
in your food dryers will fare with age. Are there any applications or circumstances,
however extreme, in which the zinc could crack off? Are there any new alternative
plating or coating processes you should use?
Questions like these arise for manufacturers every day. After heavy downsizing in recent years, many corporations no longer maintain the in-house resources necessary to explore such research and design issues. They need the advice of outside technical experts – and one glance in the Yellow Pages reveals there is a bewildering array.
There are independent laboratories that run tests and provide raw data. There are individual engineers who specialize in one primary field, many of them former corporate employees now in business as sole practitioners. And there are full-service consulting engineering firms. How do you decide which type of service you need? In many ways, a full-service consulting engineering firm is like a wellequipped medical clinic. A new patient (client) generally meets with a staff doctor who will carefully listen to the patient’s needs (a description of the problem). The doctor (consulting engineer) personally performs or orders any tests that might be required to ultimately solve the problem. If further consultation with specialists is deemed necessary, the clinic doctor identifies them and makes referrals. When all work is completed, the clinic maintains a detailed file documenting all work performed.
Without a doubt, the most critical step is defining your technical question or problem – your needs. Because even if you think your problem is defined, it actually may not be. That is where a consulting engineer can make a difference. Surprisingly, a client’s original definition of a problem frequently bears little resemblance to the ultimate conclusion of an engineering investigation. A consulting engineer provides the insight to ask the detailed questions and delve into what may be causing the “symptoms.” For example, a problem thought to be due to poor plating may, in fact, be due to the plating process itself or even the base material being completely wrong for the application.
Arriving at the correct analysis of a problem might require metallurgical, chemical and mechanical analyses, along with related laboratory services – all available only from a full-service consulting engineering firm. When called for, a consulting engineering firm can even recommend how to fabricate better parts at a lower cost. In situations like this, hiring a laboratory that provides only raw data – without interpretation – could be an inappropriate, and ultimately costly, choice. As the name implies, a full-service consulting engineering firm provides much more than just data. Typically, prospective clients meet with one or more representatives of the firm to describe their particular problem in some detail. If they decide to proceed, the firm will prepare an analysis of the problem as stated by the client; facilitate any required laboratory testing; consult with specialists in specific fields, if necessary; and prepare documents that detail the project and outline final conclusions.
In addition to providing analyses and recommendations directly to clients, consulting engineering firms may also be retained to verify results obtained from in-house or suppliers’ laboratories. If a client should question such test results, a full-service consulting engineering firm can function as a neutral third party to confirm or contradict the information’s validity.
Another reason to work with consulting engineering firms is that they give you virtually immediate access to a staff of highly trained and experienced engineers, technicians and support staff – without the ongoing cost and overhead associated with maintaining a permanent, in-house engineering lab facility. In this post-downsizing era, many companies rely on consulting engineering firms as an extension of their own employees and facilities, tapping into them as needed.
When companies face technical problems, it is clear that the wisest course of action most often is to seek the help of a consulting engineering firm. Since accurately defining the problem is critical, probably the best advice is to contact them early on. Their involvement will ensure the most cost-effective outcome of the problem-solving process.