Economics and technical consultancy

Although it has never been defined, engineering economics is a discipline accepted by technical consultancies. It is basically used in making choices between alternative technologies with respect to the client´s finances not the national economy. Outputs are assumed equal from all alternatives and are ignored. Because there has been no general agreement among engineers concerning what comprises engineering economics, some confusion surrounds the whole subject. Today, many technical consultancy clients are in developing countries who obtain much investment capital from bilateral and multilateral lending agencies, requiring optimisation to be done with respect to the economy at all stages in the project cycle and benefits from outputs to be included. Technical consultancies have often found it difficult to obtain the right type of economic expertise, partly because they are faced with the challenge of remaining in the lead, while accepting that only economists can properly address their clients´ socioeconomic problems. This difficulty would at least be partly solved by better communication between engineers and economists, which can only come about after each has had some training in the other´s discipline. The problems with integrating in-house economists into technical consultancies need further consideration.