Founding Philosophy
Over the past decades, competitive bidding has become the principle method used by private sector companies to procure structural engineering services. This method was intended to ensure that the client received the most competitive price for engineering services. However, this method has produced some unanticipated consequences. To remain competitive, many structural engineering firms have reduced engineering scope in order to remain competitive. The resulting loss in quality of engineering and contract documents can be observed by the increased frequency of engineering and construction change orders. Additionally, there is another less obvious consequence with significant economical impact to the total project cost.

The structural engineer is always obligated to provide a design that complies with the minimum requirements of the applicable building codes. This creates a lower bound on the construction cost, but not an upper bound. Consequently, structural engineers can bid competitively by reducing engineering scope through overly conservative design assumptions that result in higher material usage and, hence, higher construction costs. In an effort to further limit scope, engineers may also reduce the level of detail included in the construction documents. This inevitably results in higher construction costs either in the initial bid (as contractors factor up bids to cover unforeseen conditions) or in construction change orders. Thus, one can conclude that engineering fees have a direct inverse relationship to total project costs, meaning clients cannot guarantee the most economical engineering design by selecting the engineer with the lowest price. From the perspective of the owner, the best structural design is the one that meets all design objectives and which costs the least to design AND build.

INGENII was founded on the philosophy of reducing overhead costs, instead of engineering scope, as a means to maintain a competitive fee structure and, simultaneously, to increase the value INGENII provides to our clients by developing more economical designs. Recent advancements in communications technology and the availability of economical high speed internet access allows INGENII to significantly lower operating overhead through the establishment of a virtual office.

INGENII’s engineers are able to maintain continuous real time contact via the internet to facilitate the type of robust communication and exchange of ideas necessary for developing engineering designs and maintaining project coordination. INGENII project team members have the ability to exchange documents, perform reviews and create redline drawings by sharing control of documents over the internet.