When Business Decisions Impact Engineering

Professional engineers always want the best for their clients. They want to work with the best materials and team members because they are trained to seek optimal solutions. Indeed, engineers are perfectionists. If it was up to engineers, budget would not be a primary concern.

Unfortunately, reality intrudes on perfection and engineers must deal with compromises on schedules and budgets, sometimes resulting in sub-optimal designs.

Professional engineers face many challenges. Aside from performing at their best, they need to compromise to meet schedules and cost budgets. When business decisions impact engineering, there are things to sacrifice, it can be good, fast, or cheap. Business owners can usually only pick any two from these approaches: good, fast and cheap.  Good, fast, and cheap is best but almost always unrealistic.  Something’s got to give.