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Do engineers in your firm do their own CAD/BIM modeling, or do drafters do it? The question is not far removed from the times of T-squares, pencils, and drafting boards. The answer balances the benefit of freeing up time for a skilled engineer to do what they do best with the drawback of losing the ability for the designer to be able to work the detail through to the end and refining as they draw.
Similarly, I often consider the question, “Engineer or Principal?” Can one really be both at the same time? Can an engineer remain a designer, while also leading other designers and the firm?
As the owner of a small firm, I can understand the roles of the sole practitioner, and I envy those heroes without payroll or HR. The sole practitioner wears all the hats: all the design work, the analysis, the modeling, production drawings, and client meetings. On top of that, they prepare the invoices, pay the bills, make collection calls, shop for insurance, clean the office, answer the phone, etc. Pass the Advil! You’re 100% in control of your own destiny, for better or for worse.
On the contrary, large firms fascinate me. The principal doesn’t manage projects per se but instead manages people (or people who manage other people); he or she is more of the visionary, goal setter, and mentor. If done well, lots of talented people with specialized roles are free to make the work happen, and the lights stay on. At least one large firm principal I know, a structural engineer by training and experience, remarked to me he couldn’t remember the last time he designed a building. As a nuts-and-bolts guy, I can’t quite wrap my arms around that. In the end, though, the buck stops with the principal of the large firm who is accountable for the successes and failures of the firm just as much as the sole proprietor, like a one-armed paper hanger does, but with a staggeringly larger amount of overhead and payroll that would make most of us blush. With all those mouths to feed, failure is not an option.
Most of us work in small firms located in the middle somewhere, with more than one person but fewer than 50. As a principal in a middle-sized firm, you’re never totally removed from design work; in fact, you still do a fair amount yourself. Eventually, you run out of other people to delegate to. You can’t turn away longtime repeat clients, and you will want to make room for those special portfolioworthy projects that you’ve been dreaming of. The principal rolls up the sleeves because in a small firm, it’s all hands-on-deck all the time.
But you can’t tune out the rest of the office and focus just on your design work. Doing so would be abdicating your most important responsibility to be the leader, visionary, and mentor who sees the big picture and prioritizes the overall workflow of the office.
Regardless of firm size, as a principal, you have to be good at things that don’t come with a bachelor’s degree in structural engineering—at least they didn’t when I was in college. These skills include:
- Salesmanship in sounding confident as you explain to a new client why your firm is heads and shoulders above the rest.
- Marketing to find the most effective ways to reach the target clients who don’t call you first.
- Teaching young engineers the things they didn’t learn in college-technical and otherwise.
- Listening to the ideas, criticisms, panics, and dreams of engineers young and old who look to you as their leader, then explaining the direction to take for a project or design without using an iron fist but with finality.
- Negotiating professional service contract terms with corporate types and lawyers who know less about the subject than you do (kudos to CASE and the continuing education efforts about all things contracts!).
- Being firm when you need to, whether with a client (easy) or employee (tough).
- Being empathetic when that’s needed too.
- My favorite: sizing up a potential client based on as little as a 5-minute phone call, at the end of which you have to decide whether to move on or continue.
- Developing the sixth sense to know the fine line between harassing a client for payment too early, versus waiting too long and losing leverage.
- Managing risks and dealing with (hopefully rare) insurance claims.
Then, when business matters are taken care, it’s back to wearing the engineer hat, taking on jobs that don’t fit nicely into the rest of the office workflow and keeping your talented staff free to focus on what they do best.
How does one balance the life of an engineer and the life of a principal at the same time in a small firm? One of these days I hope to figure that out. ■
About the Author
Kevin H. Chamberlain, PE, SE, is a Principal (and Engineer) at DeStefano & Chamberlain, Inc. in Fairfield, CT. He serves on the CASE Guidelines Committee and can be reached at kevinc@dcstructural.com
