Among the most important decisions a client will be required to make is the manner in which the client selects the engineering firm to perform services being procured. In selecting an engineering firm, the client must always recognize that it is not acquiring a predetermined product. Instead, it is acquiring the professional engineering skill, talent, and effort necessary to achieve the client’s ultimate objective. Black’s Law Dictionary defines "engineering" as the "art and science by which mechanical properties of matter are made useful to man in structures and machines." As defined above, engineering is as much an art as it is a science. Given the same goals of any client’s project, different engineers will come up with different solutions (designs) based upon their individual ingenuity; innovativeness; past experience; familiarity with equipment, brand reliability, and operability; available design hours; and other factors (for example, the "art of engineering"). Just as the public has come to recognize that not all physicians are equal, and that given the same set of symptoms different physicians will invariably offer different opinions and recommendations (yet still based upon applicable science), the same holds true of engineering.

Moreover, by using his or her talents to effectively serve the client’s needs, the engineer better serves the public as a whole. When a client participates in an active dialogue with the engineering firm, a mutual understanding can be reached between the engineering firm and the client about the precise scope of services the engineer will be required to perform to meet the client’s objectives.

In this connection, it is critical for the client to view the design cost in the perspective of the total project cost over the useful life of the facility (lifecycle cost). If one considers, for example, a college dormitory, and examines the total cost over its estimated economic life of 50 years, it can be demonstrated that furnishing, operating, maintaining, and repairing the facility represents about 65 percent of the lifecycle cost, construction represents about 33 percent of the lifecycle cost, and the design represents less than 2 percent of the lifecycle cost. Yet the design effort has a crucial influence, either positively or negatively, upon both the 33 percent construction costs and the 65 percent furnishing, operating, maintaining, and repairing costs.

Experience has shown that the design fees invested at the front end have a tremendous "leveraging effect" for the client on the resulting lifecycle cost. Because of this leveraging effect, it is vitally important for the client to obtain the highest possible technical quality in the design effort. A client that seeks to obtain a savings by reducing design costs without regard for technical quality risks losing the benefit of the leveraging effect, with the impact being felt over the entire lifecycle of the project, most likely in the form of higher costs. It is a classic example of a client being penny-wise, but pound foolish

Because of the realization of these key factors, many public and private clients have mandated competitive procedures whereby engineering firms compete solely on the basis of technical qualifications. Under those procedures, the client selects the engineering firm that is best qualified technically to undertake the project. These procedures provide numerous safeguards to ensure that the process is conducted in a fair and reasonable manner and in the client’s best interests.

These basic procedures have served both public and private clients for a number of years. They help to ensure that the client obtains high-quality engineering services on a competitive basis at a fair and reasonable price. It also allows the coincidence of interest between the client and the engineering firm. The client’s interests are served by obtaining the highest value-added services; the engineering firm is highly motivated to provide the highest quality services, because in doing so, the firm maximizes its opportunity for future work for the client.

In summary, qualifications-based procedures for procuring engineering services have been carefully conceived and have been proven successful through the test of time, and as evidenced by the number of satisfied clients. These procedures have long been used by the federal and virtually all state governments for procurement of architectural and engineering services. The process achieves successful, high-quality results on a cost-effective basis with projects completed within budgets and ultimately experiencing lower costs over the lifecycle of the project. It is no wonder that public and private clients generally use a qualifications-based selection procedure when procuring engineering services.


Arthur E. Schwartz serves as a deputy executive director and general counsel for the National Society of Professional Engineers. He provides individualized ethics training programs to engineering companies and organizations of all sizes and areas of practice. For more information on the scope of services and costs, please contact him at 703-684-2845 or at aschwartz@nspe.org. Visit www.nspe.org for more information on this or other ethical matters.