When You Should Hire a Flexible Engineering Consultant Partner Compared to Large Firms or Hiring In-House
You’re a technology company that wants to scale production to the next level. But you know you don’t have the capacity or experience on your current team to fully manage the process. How do you move forward?
Do you hire a single engineering consultant, a smaller and flexible consulting team, a large engineering firm, or do you bring someone in-house?
These questions are asked by almost every company we’ve worked with.
However, the answer isn’t straightforward. The type of engineering talent you should bring on to scale up will be determined by your business stage, long-term budget, and the type of technology you’re bringing to the market.
If you bring on the right people during the critical stage of scaling up, you can accelerate your entry into the market.
If you don’t bring on the right people, you’ll likely fall victim to delays, overlooked costs, and friction within your team.
Here’s what the Next Rung Technology team has learned about how to make the right engineering consultant hiring decisions when scaling your technology startup.
When you should hire a large engineering consulting firm:
Large engineering firms are best suited to work with businesses that already have very well-defined technologies and processes. They’re used to working on massive scale projects, but aren’t the most flexible in how they integrate with your team.
You’ll want to ensure that you have at least some scale-up experience in-house before you engage a large engineering consulting firm. This way, you can bring focused direction to the collaboration to increase the speed of execution and lessen the amount of fees.
Another thing to keep in mind about large engineering firms – they’re great at executing well-defined projects. If you haven’t clearly defined a project or planned a scale-up approach before engaging a large firm, you could find that things move slower during the discovery phase, as you’ll work with a new team with that might not have expertise in complex project definition.
Lastly, you’ll want to ensure you have enough capacity to keep up with the deliverables created by the large firm. If you have a small team that can’t execute on the knowledge, you’ll find yourself buried in deliverables with your path forward obscured. If your current team doesn’t have this capacity, you’ll want to consider bringing on a smaller engineering consulting firm like Next Rung Technology that can help you process and execute optimally on the knowledge you generate with the large firm.
We at Next Rung have worked as Owners Engineer for many companies that don’t have the capacity to manage and execute on all the deliverables from a large engineering firm. We act as an extension of their team to make sure they stay on schedule. Is this something you could use? Get in Touch Now.
In summary, you should hire large engineering consulting firms when you have a defined project within an area that the firm has expertise, a clearly understood technology and processes, and enough capacity already in-house to handle the pace of scaling up.
When you should hire a lightweight, flexible engineering consulting firm:
You should work with more flexible engineering consulting firms like Next Rung Technology when your technology is newer with the processes still being defined. Flexible firms like us will be able to fully integrate with your team and drive forward progress even within the context of continual change and organizational re-alignment.
A flexible firm works very well if you’re still exploring your commercialization strategy. If you hire a large firm or bring someone in-house then have to pivot based on market feedback, you can find yourself in a large financial commitment that no longer makes sense given your direction. A smaller and more flexible consulting firm will be able to provide insight on how you should pivot, and continue to support you after you change direction. The Next Rung team can be especially valuable in this context, as most of our members have deep experience working directly with startups.
Another scenario where it’s beneficial to bring in a flexible engineering consultant team is if you only need expanded capacity for a shorter period of time (3 years or less) while you scale-up. It doesn’t make sense to bring someone on in-house if you won’t need their capabilities 12-36 months from now.
When you should hire engineering talent in-house:
When hiring in-house, you should do it with an eye on long-term benefit. If you need an immediate boost in the next year, the training and permanent cost of an in-house hire might not make sense.
Hiring in-house is a large two-way commitment between the company and the employee, and it’s not something that should be done to address a short-term gap that might not be as relevant in the next 2-5 years as your company grows.
You’ll also want to ensure that you have enough engineering work in a specific space to sustain a full time employee. If you have 40 hours/week of engineering work, but it’s spread across different specialties such as R&D, process development, and plant engineering, then it would be more cost efficient to hire a flexible engineering consultant firm such as Next Rung Technology that can plug the holes you have across a variety of engineering specialties.
However, if you have a lack of expertise in a specific engineering vertical that requires full time work to fill, and expertise specific vertical is a key component in your growth strategy, hiring in house would be the way to approach filling that lack.
It’s also important to remember that you can choose to both hire a engineering consultant firm and hire in house. When we do work with clients, we ensure we’re integrated with their in-house teams so they can use the knowledge generated to up-skill their current team.
Things to Consider for Any Type of Engineering Hire for Your Sustainable Technology Company:
No matter who you hire, you need to make sure the firm or person fits the following criteria that is specific to your company:
They’re a cultural fit with larger company values and a fit with the teams they’ll be working with. If you and your team don’t like the person and how they operate, it doesn’t matter how talented they are. There will be friction in the long term.
They fill a set of specific needs that are currently the bottleneck to your organization’s growth. With some clients, their bottleneck comes with plant engineering and manufacturing. With others, the bottleneck lies in process engineering and commercialization strategy. Objective awareness of your weaknesses as a company is crucial when looking for ways to expand capacity.
Are you wondering how to on-board engineering talent to support your growing sustainability technology company?
