The Owners' Perspective: Issues Important to an Owner in the Owner/Consultant Relationship

I am a Registered Professional Structural Engineer and ASCE member. I worked as a consulting engineer for numerous firms for 15 years, as a staff engineer, senior engineer, and finally as a Project Manager. My clients have included owners and architects. Six years ago, I joined the Real Estate Division at a major U.S. Corporation and became an "owner." I quickly learned the important issues to an owner regarding the hiring and managing of engineering consultants. What I knew for 15 years about what is important to an owner was off the mark. The important issues to an engineer and to an owner are clearly different, and sometimes conflict. For example, engineers need to focus on their own profitability. However, most owners have very little regard for this and instead focus on minimizing their consultant costs thru leveraging of services, on-call contracts, negotiating and other methods. Owners instead focus on minimizing their construction costs, while engineers at times, in order to meet aggressive deadlines or for other reasons, will be overly conservative in their designs. Most owners do not fully understand the profession of engineering design. Indeed, most of the owners that hire you will have a non-engineering background, and increasingly will have a purely financial background. I am a rare "owner" in that I am able to understand the language and needs of engineers, having been one. Therefore, it is important for engineers to educate the owner, without going into technical detail, exactly what it is that an engineer does. Owners may have expectations that are not in line with the engineers legal responsibilities. Setting proper expectations, and then meeting those expectations, can make for a satisfied client. There are a few methods of presenting this, which include marketing brochures, proposals that include specific work efforts, and so forth. One of the most important issues to an owner is clear communication. One of the most frustrating things to an owner is not hearing from a consultant for weeks and not knowing the status of work. Engineers need to clearly communicate their schedule of work and then provide unprompted status updates.