Selection of the Best Engineering Firm
Selecting the best engineering firm for your project is a hard task to complete and harder to achieve. Several companies throughout the nation will try to convince you to use their services, but the best one will be the one that fulfills your requests.
Engineering Firm: Statement of the Project
Prepare a brief detailed summary of the project. This will help Eengineering firms decide whether or not participate in your project and to know if they can successfully perform the project you are thinking about. It will save you time and money and will discard other companies that might not match your desired skills and scope of work. This preliminary scope should have:
· The name of the project and location.
· Details like proposed use, capacity and other general related information.
· Funding sources or where the money for the investment will come from.
· Prepare or estimate a calendar and targeted dates.
· Special requirements or restrictions.
· Specialties involved in your project, for example, inspection and management services.
Engineering Firm: Request of Qualification
Once your scope has been elaborated using the guidelines from the previous section, engineering firms must be invited to submit their credentials and qualifications. Public agencies are required to inform through massive media, that the request for qualification process has begun. The way it will be informed, depends on the size and complexity of the project. The contract announcement should include:
· The project description.
· Project’s name and contact person.
· Due dates for submission.
· Special requirements.
· Documentation required from the firms.
Each firm then must submit the information requested along with the names of firm owners, number of years in business, types of services offered, background on key technical personnel, similar projects designed by the firm, projects underway, etc.
Evaluation of Qualifications
When the deadline for submission of statements for qualifications has expired, the owner should evaluate the qualifications of those firms that responded, and narrow the field of interested firms to three to five firms. Then each firm will be evaluated based in their experience on similar projects, key staff, expertise, facilities and references.
This process is usually done by a committee or in some instances the architect of the project will conduct the process. This process should be done by competent professionals that are capable of evaluate several performances.
Frequently, an owner will emphasize on firms having experience in similar projects and solid performance along their careers. This can be done weighing their experience, staff, economic and finance stability and past projects using a balanced formula to select the most suitable engineering firm based on his requirements.
Engineering Firm: Ranking Process
The final process is the more difficult process of all. The Owner’s opinion has huge importance since the selection will be based using his criteria and evaluation requirement. When conducting the evaluations, each committee member ranks the firms, highest to lowest, according to their total scores. The firm that is rated most highly overall should be notified that it has been selected to receive the contract, pending agreement on the scope of service and the fee for those services.
