At my small firm, we bill out approximately 160-220 hours per month/engineer. We are a geotechnical/construction engineering firm and I wanted to get a feel for what was normal with other firms? I've only worked for one firm and would like to know what other firms are doing on an hourly/engineer basis. I know some factors such as job responsibilities can come into play but just wanted to get a feel for what other firms do.
Billable hours
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Andy Lin
Founder of Structural Engineer HQ
"220 hours"... sounds like you are working over 50 hours per week consistently??
You probably already know this but a common metrics to compare apple to apple is to calculate your utilization rate (i.e. percent of billable time).
I've heard that for engineering firms, the rule of thumb is about 50% for principals and 70%+ for employees (could even be 80%, 90%+, or 99% depending on discipline and job responsibility).
So assuming 40-hour week averaging 70% utilization firm-wide, that comes out to be 120 hours per month/engineer... (40/7*30*0.7)
You probably already know this but a common metrics to compare apple to apple is to calculate your utilization rate (i.e. percent of billable time).
I've heard that for engineering firms, the rule of thumb is about 50% for principals and 70%+ for employees (could even be 80%, 90%+, or 99% depending on discipline and job responsibility).
So assuming 40-hour week averaging 70% utilization firm-wide, that comes out to be 120 hours per month/engineer... (40/7*30*0.7)
KevinA
Well-known member
Andy is pretty spot on from what I've seen. Just to illustrate the range in our office- Our office manager, (PE, VP) has very low utilization and is usually focused on marketing and biz development. He is around 10%. Our dept manager (principal, focused on operations) is around 50%. I'm a 15 year PE supervising employees, recruiting, marketing, doing proposals, client relations, etc, in addition to billable work and I'm about 65%. Other senior PMs are about the same. Our younger EITs, CAD techs, recent grads are at 85-90%. They are heavy focused on production.
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We are also on a utilization model, I am 5 years in, and my utilization goal is between 80-85% I believe. We range from about 10% utilization goal to 90%, except summer hires which are technically 100%.
Voomie
PE
Right now, my firm is running at 75% Management is pushing to up that.
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OHBridgeGuy
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Similar at my firm, 30% for very heavy business development, around 50% for project managers with a sales goal, I am at 75% as a people manager, most of the design/production staff is around 80-83%. We cap out at 85% for engineering techs/draftsmen. Anything over about 85% is hard to hit just based on vacation, sick, training, and normal downtime from meetings and IT issues.
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