[BC] Making engineering pay

[Kevin C. Kidd, CSRE]

Chuck,

It doesn't really matter.  The company has to get a 
substantial portion for equipment and overhead.  I own my 
own business, have 1 part time engineering contractor and 5 
part time general engineering labor contractors and charge 
$65-75 per man hour.  A portion goes in my pocket.  The 
rest keeps the lights on, the insurance paid, equipment up 
to date and calibrated.  Thankfully, I have built my 
business over 23 years and have no business related debt.

Lots of good mechanics and engineers have gone out on their 
own only to discover that billing $125/hour sounds great 
until you start paying the notes, buying test equipment and 
paying the bills.

When I started doing engineering work, an engineer/2-way 
guy in this area charged $15 per hour.  I was charging 
$35.  He had a small amount of test equipment.  I had a 
small amount of test equipment.  He barely lived off of his 
labor rate.  I had other income and lived great on mine AND 
started slowly upgrading test equipment.  He told me I was 
charging too much.  I actually heard him say that if he 
could make the same money engineering radio stations as if 
he were working a full time job then he was happy.  He 
failed to keep his test equipment and transportation 
up-to-date and eventually faded into bankruptcy.  The last 
time I talked to him he was driving a 15 year old Datsun 
mosquito fogger, owned a voltmeter and was looking for 
work.

Ron has been gone for years and I have more work than I can 
do sometimes.   I am also contemplating an across the board 
rate increase.

Later,

At 08:34 AM 7/24/2006, cldube wrote

How much does the tech actually make and how much goes to 
his firm?

Chuck Dube

Message: 29
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 20:58:18 -0500
From: "Ron Cole" <rondcole at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [BC] Making engineering pay
To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
Message-ID:
<2f88e090607231858u799ac844w5ce5e173c57853db at mail.gmail.com>
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I chose to get out of the industry.
The going rate for a Contract Cell site tech is $125/hr.

Ron

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-- 

Kevin Kidd, CSRE
WD4RAT
mailto:kkidd at kkbc.com

KK BROADCAST ENGINEERING
http://www.kkbc.com

AM GROUND SYSTEMS CO.
http://www.amgroundsystems.com

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Lawrenceburg, TN 38464
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