Engineering Design Consultancy Fees

Vivek G. Abhyankar, Structural Engineer, elaborates on the various aspects of Engineering Design Consultancy Fees, the agreements, do’s and don’ts, Indian as well as foreign consultancy practices, along with case studies, for the benefit of contractors, consultants, clients as well as accounts, tendering, and business development professionals connected to civil engineering.

Civil Engineering works are classified into various sectors, each of which are backed by parent disciplines (‘*’ as listed ahead). All these sectors have their own specific discipline-wide design requirements as per (1) type of contract, (2) type of structure/s and (3) as per desired stage (DPR stage, tender stage, detail engineering, O&M etc).

Each discipline operates in different individual styles, with different skill sets and resources; and different timelines to accomplish their assigned scope of work. Different creativity quotients are involved (as well as different risks too); apart from these, different machines, software programs & different team sizes etc. are involved, and hence each one of them charge different fees as per the ‘scope of work’ and desired quality of outputs. For example, an Architect charges 4% fees for planning, design and approval / liaison a building project, whereas a structural engineer charges 0.2% to 1% for structural design & drawings of the same building (depending on the magnitude of work, simplicity vs. complexity, repetitiveness or uniqueness of details, monopoly, resources availability etc.).