Engineering office

An engineering office or technical office is a service company that specializes in planning , consulting , project management or project implementation in the technical / engineering field.

Classic engineering offices

Classic engineering offices are primarily found in the field of civil engineering . In this area, numerous offices deal with the different disciplines of construction. This includes, for example, structural planning and structural engineering . In addition, companies specialize in special areas such as geotechnical engineering and civil engineering, technical building equipment or fire protection planning. The main feature of an engineering office is that it usually only deals with the planning, i.e. the theoretical implementation, of the construction work. This includes the creation of static calculations and construction plans. The execution of the construction work falls into the field of the construction industry or the building trade . Due to the close cooperation between civil engineers and architects, there are numerous hybrid offices which form an intersection between an architectural office and an engineering office.

Other forms of engineering

A more special form of the engineering office is the software engineering office . This is focused on the technical area of " software " (specialty of computer science ).

Temporary employment, temporary work, agency work, temporary employment or personnel leasing

In Germany, some so-called engineering offices are entitled to lend their employees, usually draftsmen, technicians and engineers, to changing customers as part of what is known as temporary employment . Alternatively, projects are also processed in the form of a work contract . Well-known personnel service providers in Germany are, for example, Ferchau Engineering , Bertrandt , Goetzfried , Hays , top itservices , Personality-IT and Harvey-Nash . However, this process is criticized for being hostile to SMEs, as the resources are often only used to service short-term staff shortages in large-scale industry. The innovative medium-sized companies and small engineering offices are thus losing their market importance.

German engineering offices

The term engineer in Germany with its variants, in particular including engineer , is protected by state laws (see engineer: job title ), which is why an engineer must be in charge of an office named in this regard . The chambers of engineers of the federal states are responsible.

Austrian engineering offices

In Austria it is a regulated trade with the exact name engineering offices (consulting engineers) .

Requirements for the business registration are: Successful university degree in a corresponding field of study and at least three years of professional activity in the relevant subject or successful completion of a corresponding vocational higher technical (HTL) or higher forestry school (HFL) and six years of professional activity, as well as an engineering degree or engineering degree in all cases. In addition, a special and extensive written and oral proficiency test must be taken.

The commercial scope of engineering offices includes consulting, drawing up plans, calculations and studies, carrying out investigations, reviews and measurements, drafting projects, monitoring the execution of projects, accepting projects and checking that the project has been carried out, including testing the project-related invoices as well as the preparation of reports in relevant specialist areas.

Engineering offices are entitled to represent the client before authorities or corporations under public law within the scope of their trade license.