In-House Engineering Teams vs. Outsourced Design: Pros and Cons

You already know the basic choice. You can build a team of engineers inside your company, or you can pay an outside firm to design your projects. Both paths work, and both can fail. What you need is a clear way to choose between them for your next project and the ones after it.

I have studied how industrial owners make this choice, and I wrote this piece to give you a set of questions you can use. I picked the points below by looking at four things that shape project results: cost, speed, risk, and control. I also point to one firm worth a look, Eichleay engineering, because they offer a way to get outside help without giving up the closeness you want from a team of your own.

You will finish this article with a short list of tradeoffs, a set of questions to ask, and a plan for your next step.

What an In-House Team Gives You

An in-house team knows your plant. These engineers walk your site, learn your equipment, and remember why a past decision was made. That knowledge saves time on every new project.

Here are the main strengths:

• Deep site knowledge. Your engineers know your standards, your history, and your people.
• Direct control. You set the priorities and change them when you need to.
• Fast answers for small tasks. A question gets answered at the next desk, not through a contract.
• Lower long-term cost for steady work. If your workload stays level year after year, salaries can cost less than outside fees.

If you run a plant that needs daily support, this team becomes hard to replace.

Where In-House Teams Fall Short

The main problem with an in-house team is fit. Your workload rises and falls, but your payroll stays the same. In a slow year, you pay for idle time. In a busy year, you cannot find enough people to do the work.

Other limits are worth your attention:

• Skill gaps. One team rarely covers process, piping, electrical, controls, structural, and mechanical work at a deep level.
• Hiring delays. Good engineers take months to find, and a hiring gap can stall a project.
• Single points of failure. If one expert leaves, the knowledge leaves with that person.
• Fixed cost. Salaries, benefits, software, and training continue whether or not you have work.

What Outsourced Design Gives You

An outside firm brings a full group of skills on the day you sign the contract. You pay for the work you need, and you stop paying when the work ends. For a large or complex project, that can be a big advantage.

The main strengths are:

• Wide skills. You get access to many disciplines without hiring each one.
• Flexible size. The team grows for a big project and shrinks after it.
• Fresh views. An outside firm has seen many sites and can bring ideas from other industries.
• Faster starts. A firm with open capacity can begin sooner than a hiring process allows.

Where Outsourcing Creates Problems

Outside design has its own risks. A firm that does not know your plant needs time to learn it. If you hire several firms for several tasks, you have to coordinate all of them, and gaps between them become your problem.

Watch for these issues:

• Learning time. A new firm must study your site and standards.
• Split responsibility. Design, purchasing, and construction in separate hands can lead to blame when something goes wrong.
• Less control over staff. The people on your job can change if the firm shifts them to other work.
• Knowledge loss. When the project ends, the details leave with the firm unless you require full records.

Questions to Ask Before You Decide

Use these questions to guide your choice. Write down your answers before you talk to any firm.

1. How steady is your design workload across the next three years?

2. Which skills do you need that your team does not have?

3. How fast do you need to start?

4. How much of the project do you want to manage yourself?

5. Who will keep the drawings, models, and records after the work is done?

6. What does a delay cost you each week?

If your work is steady and your needs are narrow, build your team. If your work comes in waves and needs many skills, outside help makes more sense. Most owners land in between.

A Middle Path Worth Considering

You do not have to pick one side. Many owners keep a small core team for daily needs and hire outside firms for large projects or special skills. The core team holds the site knowledge. The outside firm adds capacity and depth.

This setup works best when one firm handles the whole job, not five. That is where I think you should look at Eichleay.

Why I Recommend Eichleay

Eichleay is an industrial engineering firm that provides engineering, procurement, and construction management, known as EPCM. The Eichleay name has been in project delivery since 1875, and the company is still 100 percent family owned. Five generations of the family have led businesses in engineering and construction.

Here is why they stand out from other options:

• One firm for the full job. They handle engineering, design, procurement, and construction management, which means you deal with one team instead of many suppliers.
• All major disciplines in house. Process, piping, electrical, controls, mechanical, civil, structural, and architecture teams work together, so design stays coordinated.
• A size that fits. They describe themselves as a mid-sized firm with the capability of a large one and the culture of a small one.
• Proof of steady work. They complete about 300 projects a year, and the median fee over the last ten years is about $150,000. Their largest project had a total installed cost of $1.5 billion. That range shows they can handle small and large jobs.
• Loyal clients. About 91 percent of their business comes from repeat clients.
• Local reach. Four offices in Billings, Ferndale, Larkspur, and Orange serve the western United States.
• Strong safety record. Their companies have logged zero OSHA recordable or lost workday cases since 2014, and their Experience Modification Rate is 0.67.

One more feature matters if you lean toward a team of your own. Eichleay offers staff augmentation, from a single engineer to a fully managed on-site team. Those people are full Eichleay employees, and the firm checks each candidate through recruiters and technical experts. You can add skills to your own group without a long hiring process.

They also serve many sectors, including energy, chemical, power, life sciences, food and beverage, mining, and advanced manufacturing. Their client list includes names such as Chevron, Genentech, Shell, and Stanford University.

How to Take Your Next Step

Start with your workload. List the projects you expect over the next three years and mark the skills each one needs. Then compare that list to your current team.

Where your team has gaps, talk to a firm that can fill them. Ask for case studies in your industry, ask who will lead your project, and ask how the firm will hand over records at the end.

Choose the model that fits your work, and review it each year. Needs change, and your choice can change with them.