The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact of businesses and organizations all over the world, and adopting new technologies and strategies has become crucial for survival of businesses. Construction industry in particular, has now started to adapt and implement technologies that can not only help during emergency situations like COVID-19 outbreak, but make the engineering projects more efficient. Construction is one of the world’s largest industries, contributing 14% of the global GDP according to Mckinsey & Company. The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced additional challenges, which has greatly impacted the already modest profits for developers and contractors.
However, outsourcing engineering services is an excellent strategy to reduce costs, increase profits and improve the overall project performance. The main 2 reasons for this are:
Developers and contractors can pay for specific services whenever needed, instead of assuming a fixed monthly payroll.
Engineering services can be delegated to specialized firms, which brings immediate expertise to the project.
Let’s take a look at how outsourcing engineering projects is beneficial during COVID-19 pandemic
Predictable and Itemized Costs
Companies can hire a team of experts as permanent employees, which would require them to pay the employees regularly regardless of the frequency of projects. Constant workflow is construction industry is a rare case, since the construction industry is characterized by boom and bust cycles. Also, the salaries start to rise as expert employees get hired. On the other hand, when these engineering services are outsourced, companies gain complete access to expertise per project or per service.
With outsourcing, designs, project supervision, construction management and other services become very predicable when working with an expert engineering firm. For example, in building projects, they engineering team can be quoted and paid by floor in a high-rise building. Specialist engineering teams can considerably reduce the project completion time span, and are also very familiar with the project approval procedures required by the local authorities. Due to these factors, project approval and construction permit can be acquired in a much faster and convenient way.
Engineering companies have now started to adopt new collaboration tools that allow construction design and project approval without the need to meet in person. This makes outsourcing construction projects a much safer options even in emergency situation like COVID-19.
Increased Flexibility
Outsourcing engineering projects greatly increases the flexibility. For example, a trade contractor might be interested in Building Information Modeling (BIM) for specific components, while a general contractor might require clash detection and coordination among trades. If a company hires an engineering team with the required skills, that might increase the number of staff and ultimately increase the payroll involved in the project. Outsourcing these projects is a much efficient and cost saving approach.
An engineering consulting firm can also provide customized service according to the specific needs of the project. In most construction projects, engineering is associated with design, approval and supervision. However, most projects also need many other services like:
BIM for an existing building
Building inspection to ensure compliance with local law
Energy efficiency measures with effective energy modeling and financial analysis
Building projects involve a wide range of engineering disciplines, and the needs change many times during the project life span. Hiring a full engineering team becomes impractical during such times. Apart from new construction and building projects, outsourced engineering can also help improving the existing building systems. Considering the current emergency situation of COVID-19 outbreak, it is extremely important to improve the indoor air quality. An engineering firm can provide you with a detailed indoor air quality report, and also help with the necessary upgrades and building system inspection.
