Consulting is a wide field of work.
If your job description involves providing a service to a client utilizing your skill set and time, then you are probably a consultant of some kind.
If you have read some of the blogs on this website, you have probably come across many that describe life and work as a management or business consultant. These consultants typically assist their clients in strategy, operations, profitability, risk mitigation, and more.
But What Else is Out There?
Business consultants are not the only consultants out there in our world today. This blog will be the first of many to explore other types of consulting roles. I will describe what they do, how they support their clients, the experiences and skill set they require, and more. This article will launch into the world of Engineering and Scientific Consulting.
While there are multiple ways to divide the work of technical consultants, one very MECE way is by splitting up the work based on whether it is reactive or proactive. The former involves consulting work that looks at situations in which there was an accident, failure, or wrongdoing, investigates root causes and outlines future ramifications. The latter involves consulting work that involves heavy research & development, literature reviews, and simulation planning. Both are highly important ways to serve clients and solve problems.
Reactive Work
One of the clearest examples of reactive consulting work is at the scene of an accident, whether it be a car crash, a residential fire, or an injury (often a combination of these).
While not the first ones on the scene (emergency and medical services are always first), consultants often inspect the scene before too much is disturbed to gather evidence, to photo document everything, and to take copious notes and sketches.
In larger events, consultants will work together with others representing different parties to go through the evidence in an organized manner, assuring everyone collects the information they need. Keen attention to details and phenomenal photography skills are necessary for this kind of work.
Not all reactive work is done in the field, however.
Sometimes reactive consultants receive evidence, samples, or exemplar material for study in the laboratory. Whether the samples need to undergo chemical analysis, be view under an Electron Microscope, or be studied with a laser, much can be learned about a particular substance from careful analysis in a clean environment. This kind of work may require a Ph.D. in science or engineering as well as many years of hands-on training.
Like laboratory work, simulations can be used in reactive projects. If you have industrial engineering experience, you might use software to track movement in a factory to recreate an incident. Mechanical and chemical engineers might use computational fluid dynamics to simulate flow through an engine, the mixing of chemicals, or track fire dynamics to determine root cause analysis of an incident. Biological and health simulations could be used on a small scale, to track medicine through a body, or on a large scale, such as infections through a population. Even environmental risks can be simulated through computational analysis.
Proactive Work
Sometimes no failure or accident has occurred; rather, clients sometimes pay consultants to ensure that no such things occur.
The consulting firm may have a specific skillset or laboratory equipment that does not exist in-house. Thus, some research and development (R&D) is best suited to be outsourced to a scientific and engineering consulting firm rather than building a whole new department. This can enable the client to save time, money, and space.
For firms that hire Ph.Ds., a common task for clients is conducting literature reviews. If a Ph.D. is not located in house, this task might instead be completed by an outside consulting firm. Intellectual property reviews are also common for firms with Ph.Ds., especially in engineering. If these reviews are not common enough to warrant hiring staff full time, then this will typically be conducted by outside firms.
In a similar way to how experiments and simulations can be used for recreating accidents and incidents, these tools are also perfect for proactive work. Some consulting firms specialize in design work, so they could be contracted out to use modeling software to create a new product design or solution. Not only is hiring people full time expensive, but the software licenses can also be pricey. Thus, outsourcing these tasks may be cost efficient and potentially timely as well.
The Bottom Line
The world of consulting is vast.
The roles can range from general business and management to more niche technical and scientific ones.
Engineering and scientific consulting can be separated into reactive and proactive types of work. Reactive work focuses on root cause analysis, determining the point of failure or causation, and methods for recreating an accident or incident. Proactive work might include research & development, literature and intellectual property reviews, as well as experimental and computational analysis.
If your experiences and skillset is technical in nature, and you do not want to become a management consultant, then you may want to consider some of these other consulting paths instead.
Ricky Hollenbach is a Thermal Sciences Associate at Exponent Scientific and Engineering Consulting. He solves problems in the thermal-fluids, heat transfer, aerospace, and turbomachinery fields. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Duke University.
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