When Outsourcing Engineering Makes Sense
- CP&A Staff
- Apr 13
- 3 min read
Casper, Phillips & Associates (CP&A), based in Tacoma, USA, has seen a rise in demand for its design & build services, leading to the conclusion it might be better for companies to hire a consultant rather than taking on an employee, and looking at the benefits of this.
According to Richard Phillips, Mechanical Engineer, CP&A, the advantages to companies outsourcing work reduces the cost of a salaried employee and associated taxes and health care with that as well as overhead costs of hiring an office space and computers. It could also solve the current problem of labor shortages in finding someone who has the right skills and experience and staff training.
“We don’t want to work for our clients as their employees. Therefore, all our engagements are closed-ended. We determine how many program days are required to do a project, and charge for them, and only them. On successful completion of a project many clients then ask us to help with other projects, continuing the relationship. But, when the final program day comes, we move on to the next project,” said Phillips.
“Our primary goal is to give customers a competitive advantage over the competition. We are essentially a team that can be quickly hired and laid off without any on-boarding costs or severance packages. If I were an employee, I’d strive for the opposite: permanence and dependency.
“While we may charge multiples of what typical employees are paid, we can be more cost effective, because we don’t have any idle time. In other words, our billable work is 100% put towards production. We don’t charge for overhead costs such as estimating, writing proposals, and other non-billable tasks that employees need to perform.
“Another competitive advantage is the fact that we are outside experts. Our clients don’t currently have our capabilities, ideas, experience, or capacity to innovate. And we can be objective and work only at the margins of company politics. We’re not there to fit in, but to help them to stand out.”
Clients who have previously worked with CP&A include container crane manufacturers such as DHHI, DOOSAN, HHMC, IMPSA, and ZPMC. CP&A has provided design services to National Oilwell Varco’s AmClyde brand where CP&A provided the structural design of a two different Whirley cranes for Ingalls Shipyard. Additionally, In the overhead crane industry, CP&A has provided structural and mechanical designs that were built by American Crane & Equipment Corporation (ACECO).
Phillips added, due to the labor shortage issue a lot of companies have been looking more into the idea of outsourcing, to see if it's better than hiring someone full time.
“There are advantages such as not having to carry out a training period, because we are already experienced engineers. We all know how to work together and although our billing rates may be higher, it's justifiable because they don't have to pay for benefits, tax reliefs or pension funds,” he added.
“There's two ways to do cranes. There's design and build, where companies hire us to work under the fabricator. And then there's design, bid and build, where we design the crane and support the owner in a bidding contract.”
CP&A also specializes in building cranes that can survive an earthquake, otherwise known as seismic analysis.
The company received many requests from various ports following the earthquake in Turkey on February 6, 2023, when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked the country southeast near the Syrian border.
“When you design a crane for an earthquake, the minimum that you must do is make sure the crane doesn’t collapse. It doesn't have to be operational, and workers have to be able to get off the crane safely. However, the BASIS system will allow a crane to be operational after a much higher magnitude earthquake, keeping the top structure stable using special friction dampers as the ground shifts beneath it. We set the friction dampers to slip at a certain force so that the friction dampers do not slip during normal operation,” said Phillips.
“It's an innovative use of technology, which already exists but only in buildings in certain seismic regions such as Asia, South America and California, but not typically used in the crane industry.”
