A top U.S.-based engineering and design consultant enables capacity, resource expansion while reducing engineering service costs by 40%

Challenges.

• Selecting locations for continued access to a labor pool of structural and MEP engineers, modelers, and availability of technology, infrastructure resources.
• Unfamiliar regulatory landscape across different Indian states.
• Limited exposure to national and regional employment law, financial, tax and other compliance procedures.
• Understanding and selecting recruitment mechanisms to acquire an offshore team.

Solution & Approach.

Conducted site visits, consultations with operations and management teams to understand the client’s operations model, capabilities requirements and business challenges, and proposed the following approach:

Setting up an offshore delivery center via the Build-Transfer-Operate (BTO) outsourcing model

Our solutions encompassed all four phases of the BTO model.

1) Building Offshore Engineering Team

Setup a remote team of 5 delivering engineering CADD work and ramped up to 50+ resources over 2 years providing MEP and structural design support.

The key solutions provided at this phase included:

• Identified quick wins: selecting a few small projects that show results quickly for pilot runs and involving teams at client side capable and open to working with remote teams.
• Build a small setup of 5 engineers – expert in CADD work for engineering design support.
• Program Management: Within a year, the remote team helped increase productivity by over 20%, demonstrated quality and continuous process improvement capacities through acquisition of new technical skills and training and effective program management.
• Ramped up and established continuous growth: Expanded the team and enabled the client to source over 30% of engineering design work in structural and MEP services.

2) Transfer of Ownership

Once the successful model was established, benefits realized, we helped the client to acquire a profitable, smoothly running operations setup.

• Transferred ownership of the remote team of 50+ engineers and modelers through establishment of separate legal entity.
• Fulfilment of all regulatory business setup needs, tax, compliance, etc.
• Established a new India-based entity running profitably, with minimum investment.

3) Operations Management Support of Client-owned Offshore Center

Managed operations of client-owned center and ensured smooth integration of work and business.

• Facilitated increased process integration and connectivity with U.S. teams through technology support, cloud communications systems, dynamic reporting mechanisms, feedback systems as well as transparency in supervision, periodic personal visits for training, celebrations, etc.
• Enabled cultural integration and employee development between offices through mentor and training programs between offices, team building events, celebrations, etc.
• Managing Shared Services: Accounting and Finance, HR, Administrations, Tax and Regulatory Compliance, Recruitment and Payroll processes.

4) Expansion and Continued Process Improvements

Helped frame a collaborative business model and helped the client to source above 70% of project work to offshore center while supporting global and local expansion goals.

• Helped launch 2nd offshore delivery center: Location and Feasibility Analysis based on factors such as labor pool of engineers, language skills availability, infrastructure and technology resources availability, risk and threats, regulatory requirements, labor costs, tax, investment costs, etc.
• Operations management of the second operations center: Facilities set up, HR policy framing, Recruitment and Training, Program Management support.
• Increased engineering team size from 50 to 200: supporting 5 global business locations and helping 200 point of contacts, coordinating with 50+ U.S.-based supervisors, decreasing turnaround for engineering design projects.
• Continuous process improvement initiatives: Identifying workflow automation, process restructuring and digitalization opportunities and decreasing service delivery/cycle times.