How to scale an engineering consultancy without hiring more staff

A civil, structural or building services engineering consultancy can carry more jobs with the same team if the admin each job number brings goes to an AI worker and the design judgement stays with the engineers. A consultancy sells fee-earning hours, and the next hire is usually forced by the fee proposals, query logs, issue sheets, timesheets, expenses and invoices that arrive with every new job, done by the engineers themselves or by an office that has run out of room. That load is close to fixed per job, so a firm that wins more small jobs feels it first.

Which number forces the next hire?

The number a consultancy lives on is the share of each engineer's week that can be booked to a job and billed. Benchmarks for it are published (Deltek's annual Clarity study reports one for architecture and engineering firms in the United States and Canada), but the figure that matters is yours, and it is already in your time system. What the time system does not show is where the other hours went. Much of that gap is admin that every job brings whatever its fee: the proposal, the technical query log once the job is on site, the issue sheet for every revision, the hours and mileage to book, the invoice to raise and chase, the CDM and ISO 9001 records to file.

Because that load barely changes with the fee, the hours come out of the engineers' week, or out of an office that then asks for a project administrator. Either way the next hire does work no client pays for by the hour.

What admin grows with every job number?

• Fee proposals. The scope, the exclusions and the fee are a director's. Assembling the document on ACE terms, and following it up when it goes quiet, need not be.

• Technical queries and drawing issues. Each query is a formal question, usually from the contractor, and the dates it was sent, needed and answered are the evidence if there is a dispute.

• Timesheets and expenses. Hours booked late are hours guessed, and mileage and receipts are recharged only if claimed.

• Invoices. They wait for approved time and recharges, then for the architect or contractor to pay.

• Records. Under CDM 2015 in Great Britain a designer must make sure the client is aware of its duties before design work starts, and must give design information to the principal designer. An ISO 9001 audit asks for records too.

Can AI staff take on the admin around a job?

The repeatable jobs above fit. Each job would go to an AI worker, with a written specification, a named person who approves its work and a review each month. It can assemble the fee proposal from the enquiry and the drawings sent with it, for a director to price and send. It can chase the timesheets before the cut-off and show each project engineer the hours a job has used against its bid. It can log each technical query with its drawing and the date an answer is owed, as our guide to technical queries and the drawing issue sheet sets out, ask for the receipts after each site visit, and remind the client who has not paid, in your wording. The full set of roles is on our page for engineering consultancies.

The admin does not disappear, but the engineer's part of it would shrink to reading and approving, and the office is not asked for a new seat as the job list grows. It is the case our article on scaling a business without hiring more staff makes, for a business whose product is hours.

What stays with your engineers?

The answer to a technical query is a design decision, so it is written by an engineer and issued under that engineer's name. The fee, the scope and the exclusions are a director's. The duties a designer holds under CDM 2015 cannot be passed to an agent, which can only keep the paperwork in order and remind you when information is owed to the principal designer. What to do about a job whose fees are overdue, including any right your appointment gives you to stop work, is your decision. So is every phone call: the agent writes and does not ring. And where the record sits in a document system owned by a client or a contractor, nothing is read from it unless they agree.

How should an engineering consultancy begin?

1. Read your own ratio. Pull the last three months from the time system: hours booked to jobs against hours paid for, by engineer. Then ask each engineer where the rest went.

2. Pick the stage that costs the most unbilled hours. In a firm that bids often it is the proposal. With several jobs on site it is the query log. Where invoices go out in pieces it is the timesheets.

3. Scope one role. Write down how that task runs today, who approves what, and which systems hold the record. That is the specification an AI worker starts from, agreed with you before anything is built.

4. Measure it in your numbers. The chargeable share of each engineer's week, the days from month end to invoices out, the queries answered by the date owed. If the first role moves those, add the next.

Our explainer on what AI staff are explains who signs off a role's work and how it is reviewed, and our starting price is on the homepage.

Your engineers would keep every design decision, and the paperwork around each job number would go to an AI worker, so that their hours go on engineering. Talk to our agent about the fee proposals and query logs, if your engineers still write their own.