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Balancing Engineering Resource with Demand
Mike Costen
ASR Principal Engineer Analysis Group
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ASR Articles
- Balancing Engineering Resource with
Demand
- Buying Engineering Services
- Where to Find Engineers When You Need
Them
- How to Meet Automotive, Military and
Aerospace Specifications
Where to Find Engineers When You Need Them
Whether it was your customer or your head office, when a decision to automate
a process has been made the onus is now on you. With the depleted ranks
of your once mighty engineering staff busy with everyday issues should
you hire full timers? Contractors? Bring back retirees? Hiring full timers
for 6 months of work is not a nice thing to do. Contractors are expensive,
and can be terribly slow to learn and quick to leave with no forwarding
address. Retirees would be great, except that they like being retired
and have no desire to work 60 hour weeks to meet the deadline.
What to do? I suggest hiring an engineering services company.
An engineering services company provides mechanical, electrical or other
support on an as needed basis. The good engineering services company maintains
a highly experienced full time staff in an office stocked with the latest
CAD software and computers. Typically a single phone call can have one
or more engineers redirected to your project within a week. The engineer
will quickly become familiar with your project and become an extension
of your existing design team. The engineer will typically utilize the
service company's computer and software assets. You will not have to maintain
these costly assets. The solid modeling and rendering capabilities of
current CAD software allow whole assemblies to be easily reviewed for
approval via CAD or Microsoft office files. Communication via e-mail,
phone and fax eliminates the necessity of having someone work continuously
at your site.
Billing for engineering services is typically performed in a manner similar
to working with any supplier. A price proposal is requested for a specified
project. Upon agreement, a P.O. is issued. When the project is complete
the service company sends an invoice. There is a cash flow savings when
working with a service company relative to a contract engineer who must
be paid weekly.
There are many advantages that an engineering service company provides,
but the biggest is a means to truly match your engineering resources with
their demand. An engineering service company can be turned on and off as
often as necessary. And when they are turned on you will get the engineer
that is already familiar with your design team and past projects. Unknown
contactors with long learning curves can become a thing of the past.
Most importantly, your anxiety about finding engineers who will get the
project completed can become a thing of the past.
Michael K. Costen
Principal Engineer ASR Corporation
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