One Reason Why Some Engineers Will Never Be Millionaires

This incident is a completely true story which happened recently. Names are not required to illustrate the incident - suffice it to say it involves a very experienced engineer.

At Uniper Technologies we received an e-mail from a potential customer. This was a customer we had last done business with about ten years previously. In the meantime they had used other contractors because they had heard we were no longer in the external market - this is not true Uniper Technologies (formerly E.ON Technologies/E.ON Engineering/Power Technology) has always been and remains ready and eager to help external customers. So it transpired that we were actually the fourth company the customer had contacted.

My colleague contacted the customer and discussed the problem, which involved high vibration of a machine following some minor works. Being a bit of an enthusiast for problem solving, and wanting to know more details, my colleague dug a little deeper, to help make our quotation as relevant as possible. During the conversation he realized one very simple potential source for the problem, and suggested the customer should try this.

We put our quotation together and sent it to the customer, then came the delighted response "I tried what you suggested and it worked - no need for that job now!" So our contact remains a former customer, but a very happy former customer. We very much hope this will lead to future work from this potential client, but it illustrates how we Engineers can be quick to give away valuable information, just because we know it. I wonder if the customer would have been equally happy to have received the simple solution after the job had started? - his problem would still have been solved in the easiest possible way.

So we saved a potential customer the cost of an investigation, and potentially some intrusive maintenance work, and provided an infinite return on investment as there was no cost at all, but we missed out on the opportunity to earn some money ourselves. As a team of Engineers our initial reaction was "Good Job - neat technical solution," however our bean-counters were not so impressed, and we were left pondering whether our competitors would be so generous with their information. Actually, being Engineers, some of them might, but they wouldn't become millionaires either.

So was this the right thing to do? Where we have long-term existing relationships with customers, this is our standard practice, which we point to as an example of our value-add. It cements our relationship and underlines how Uniper Technologies always strives to save our customers money. Time will tell whether in this case the free advice will evolve into future work. If it does, then yes, it was the right thing to do, but we'll never become millionaires!