4 Ways Engineering Consulting Can Benefit Your Enterprise

Any major company needs to engineer custom equipment, processes or components. The cost of doing this is not small, but the payoff when it succeeds can be enormous. Increasingly, the most competitive companies turn to engineering consulting firms to expedite the development process. So how can engineering consultants help? Here are four ways they can benefit your company’s project:

1. Saves money over hiring staff. Having your own team of in-house engineers is a valuable resource — but also an expensive one. Whether that investment is worth it depends on what stage of the business cycle your company is at, as well as whether the specific project at hand already has a certain future. In many cases, the expense of hiring on an engineering team (or expanding your current team) is not worth it, at least until the project has proven itself. This is where engineering consulting can be such a boon. Engineering consulting gives you all the advantages of a dedicated engineering team, at a scale and timeline of your choosing. It can save you a substantial amount of cost.

2. Gives you access to new areas of expertise. Even if you have an existing engineering team, no team has unlimited experience in every field. An engineering consulting firm can bring in industry-specific or even process-specific expertise. This is doubly valuable for you, not only facilitating the immediate project but also helping your full time staff learn through collaboration. It builds your own staff resources.

3. Engineering consultants may already have a design that fits your needs. You may not have to design a part from scratch — in or out of house. A good engineering consulting agency in your industry has likely worked on projects similar to yours in the past. They may be able to engineer your component rapidly, or even have an existing component that they hold the patent to. In many cases, they can adapt from past work to make a custom solution fast.

4. Many consultants offer design-to-delivery under one roof. A big part of the expense of new component is research, design, prototyping and testing. Only after these stages can it be brought to production. When you have to manage each stage individually, you waste time and money. The best engineering firms are full service operations with proven suppliers at every stage of the process. They can do everything under one roof.

Have you used engineering consultants before? What did they bring to the table?