Rethinking Engineering Consultancy: Why It’s Time to Operate Like a Tech Company

I have written a lot of design automation articles over the past few years. I can see a lot of engineers are interested to learn and evolve. However, only a fraction of people is motivated adopt new tools.

It triggers me to think:

Is there some fundamental characteristics of the engineering industry that causes this lack of motivation?

The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry is one of the most essential sectors shaping the built environment but it’s also one of the least scalable and slowest to evolve. If we’re honest, the traditional consultancy model is showing its cracks.

Young talent is disengaged. Profitability is tied to billable hours. And innovation often takes a backseat to deliverables.

To build a more attractive, scalable, and future-proof industry, we should start thinking differently.

And I think running engineering consultancies like tech companies is the way to go.

Why We Need to Rethink the AEC Consultancy Model

Engineering consultancy has historically been defined by labour: more projects mean more people, more hours, more effort.

But here are the problems:

• It doesn’t scale. Growth is linear. More revenue requires more headcount.
• It’s unattractive to younger professionals. Career progression is slow, experience-based, and rigid.
• It’s losing the talent war. Compensation often lags behind other industries like tech, finance, and even product-based startups.
• It lacks efficiency incentives. Engineers are rewarded for hours worked, not for outcomes delivered or tools built.

And yet, across every other industry, the paradigm has shifted. Tech companies grow without linear increases in staff. They scale products, not just services. They build systems that multiply their output per person.

So why can’t engineering firms do the same?

What’s Broken: The Structural Limits of Traditional Consultancy

Let’s unpack the core structural issues that limit growth and innovation in conventional engineering firms:

1. Labor-Based Revenue Model

Most firms still monetise by billing hours. This means the only way to grow is to either raise hourly rates or add more people.

2. Fragmented Knowledge and Repetition

Engineers often recreate solutions from scratch (to some extent, even you use a universal spreadsheet) across projects. Lessons learned are rarely turned into scalable tools or reusable IP.

3. Incentive Misalignment

Engineers are rarely rewarded for building tools, sharing knowledge, or increasing efficiency. The incentive system values utilisation over innovation.

4. Rigid Roles and Hierarchies

Career paths are often limited to project management or people management, which undervalues technical excellence and tool-building contributions.

These constraints aren’t just bad for growth, more importantly they make the profession less attractive to a new generation of engineers hungry for impact and autonomy.

How to Fix It: Running an Engineering Consultancy Like a Tech Company

Here’s the vision: a hybrid firm where client services and internal tooling reinforce each other, built on lean teams, scalable tools, and tech-style culture.

1. Hybrid Structure: Consultancy + Product Team

Imagine a 10-person firm split into two integrated groups:

• Consulting Engineers (6–8 people): Deliver high-value engineering services, act as power users of in-house tools, and feed improvement ideas back into product development.
• Tooling/Product Team (2–4 people): Build automation scripts, AI assistants, and internal platforms that multiply team output and eventually become standalone offerings.

Everyone wears multiple hats, engineers can lead tools, developers can shape project workflows, and product managers emerge from inside the practice.

The trick here is both consulting engineers and product team need to understand the design process. It's not something you can do by hiring an external software engineer.

2. Scalable Workflow: Tech-Like Productivity

Borrow best practices from software teams:

• Agile Design Cycles: Use weekly design sprints and frequent iteration, not rigid, linear project flows.
• Innovation Time: Allocate time for R&D, automation experiments, or internal hackathons.
• Tool-Driven Delivery: Use every project as a sandbox for tool deployment and process automation.

Consulting becomes a testing ground. Tools evolve in real-time, based on real client needs.

3. Modern Incentives: Ownership and Autonomy

Talent stays when they’re treated like builders, not resources.

• Profit Sharing and Equity: Reward staff for creating tools that save time or generate revenue.
• Dual Career Ladders: Offer paths for both management and technical excellence (e.g., Principal Tool Engineer).
• Remote + Results-Based Work: Empower engineers to manage their time and workflow as long as the outcomes are delivered.

This is how tech companies build loyalty and performance. And it works obviously.

The Role of AI and Automation: From Engineer to Multiplier

A core lever for change is technology as a force multiplier.

• Design Automation: Scripts and generative tools reduce hours spent on modeling and calculations.
• AI for Project Management: Predict risks, optimise resources, and reduce planning errors.
• Knowledge Systems: Centralise solutions, scripts, and decisions so each engineer builds on the firm’s best ideas.

This is how a 10-person team can deliver the output of 20 or more.

What Happens When We Make the Leap?

In three to five years, an engineering firm with this model could:

• Deliver 2–3x more projects with the same headcount
• Attract top talent who value innovation, ownership, and growth
• Build internal IP that reduces delivery cost while increasing margins
• Position itself as a category leader in tech-enabled engineering

It’s already happening at the edges of our industry.

What’s missing is the willingness to redesign the consultancy model from the ground up.

Final Thoughts: Be the Firm That Builds the Future

The construction and infrastructure industries are on the verge of a technological revolution. But no revolution happens from the sidelines.

Consultancies should not wait for software vendors to innovate for them. Instead, they should become the innovators. Build their own tools. Rethink their own workflows. Align incentives with outcomes.

Running an engineering consultancy like a tech company isn’t easy, but I think is necessary.

If we want to solve bigger problems, scale smarter, and keep the best minds in the industry, we should reinvent how we work.

Wondering what you all think?