In today’s post we’re sharing a podcast of an interview of June Jewell by Anthony Fasano of The Engineering Career Coach.

>> Click HERE to listen

Here are some key points discussed in the podcast:

• Many engineers are more focused on their technical skills, the quality of their projects and the relationships with their clients and not focused on the money. Sometimes money is the last thing that gets paid attention to when working on a project and by the time you get to the end of the project you find that it wasn’t as profitable as you would hope it would be.
• Time and materials contracts are one where you bill your client for every hour that you work. Make sure that your billing rates are covering your costs of the project when you are billing clients hourly as a lot of money can get lost on time and materials contracts.
• The firms that share more financial data and help their managers to understand business and accounting concepts and financial terminology have better project profitability and their employees do a better job of managing the project.
• Improving your decision-making process on which project to go after and also by having a no-go process in place, will reduce the number of lost dollars on a project.
• Look at how you track your qualifications data and how you share the actual process of the project.
• If you do a poor job on your engineering proposal cost estimate, you are going to have a bad project with lots of problems occurring during the project. The key to a good estimate is asking a lot of questions and understanding your clients’ requirements and expectations.
• Scope creep is when the actual work that you do on a project exceeds what was agreed to in your contract outlined. There is always going to be scope creep during a project and how to react to it is very important.
• When you have a project budget, project managers have to keep their eye on every aspect of it to ensure not losing unnecessary money.
• The more you can do to tie all of your databases together, the more your employee proficiency will get improved.
• Identify who your good clients are. Bad clients drain your resources and can potentially be causing you to lose money on your profit margin of your project.

Listen now on The Engineering Career Coach

>> Click HERE to listen

About Anthony Fasano

Anthony Fasano, PE, LEED AP
The Engineering Career Coach
Author of Engineer Your Own Success

“Professional engineer turned author/speaker originally from New York who makes a living helping engineers be successful both professionally and personally.”  Learn more >