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launch a company with engineering degree?

hi there!

next year, i'll be hopefully studying civil engineering. i have planned to launch a kind of civil/structural engineering+architecture company afterwards :biggrin:

. i was just wondering the level of difficulty of doing that (i come from a wealthy family and my cousins and sister will probably study architecture/business/engineering). what do u all think? will it be easy to do it? any ideas of how is it done? (i'll be studying civil engineering with business management anyway, so i'll probably know by the time)

thanx in advance!

Reply 1

bluenoxid

We are not the people to ask really. I would advise you get some experience and possibly (preferably?) chartership with another group before striking it out alone. It will give you a portfolio of work.

Reply 2

Nikuhiru

Can't really say from experience, but I'd recommend that if you do go down this route then first become Chartered before you start up your own company!

Reply 3

WokSz

I agree but I don't see why you couldn't. THere are prospects for you to do an MBA after which will definitely help!

Reply 4

dreamer*girl

J-Curve

I agree but I don't see why you couldn't. THere are prospects for you to do an MBA after which will definitely help!

how long does it take to become chartered + do an MBA?
any idea?
thanx :smile:

Reply 5

WokSz

No idea about become chartered, but to do an MBA in England would take one year.

Reply 6

ukebert

Chartered is around 4 years I think.

I may do the same thing, I hate corporate life, and would like to do it my way :wink:

Long way ahead though.

Reply 7

*titanium*

Its nice to seem you have ambition, but in all honesty, unless your planning to hire others to do the technical work, which is not what it sounded like, well you are going to find your self in a complete mess.

Engineering isn't simply a case of get your degree and now you 'know how to engineer' University is the first stage of learning, you will learn through out your carear. A graduate is in no position to do what you want to. If you want to give it any chance of working and not get sued by your first client, then try getting some working experince untill your 30. Its a long time, but for a graduate to start up an engineering consultancey firm, you would deffinatly run in to trouble. Remember that peoples lives will be depending on you not making a mistake.

Reply 8

ukebert

Well I wouldn't want to enter consultancy :rolleyes:

But I agree to entrepeneur a consultancy firm after graduating would be suicide.

Reply 9

dreamer*girl

could i launch succesfully my company at around 28 years old?

•

finish my engineering degree -> 22 years old (takes 4 years)

•

MBA -> 23 years old (takes one year)

•

experience -> about 5 years? i'll hopefully get chartered, and i will probably have enough experience to launch my company at around 28.

is that realistic? :confused:

any opinions would be appreciated :smile:

Reply 10

bluenoxid

Stuff the MBA, the more experience you have in the field, the better. And I would be aiming for around a decade before starting out on your own. At 10-15 years, you are planning too far ahead and should be aiming to get a degree and worry about it later.

Reply 11

*titanium*

Well...what is this company going to do? I thought you where talking about a consultancey compnay, you should realise that this is not fesable. You have to be at the top of your field to start up a consultancy, and people dont start them up on their own, ussualy sevral engineers that have worked in the field for many years.

Im just finding it hard to see what sort of company a structural engineer is going to start. You wont be bale to undertake any project, when you say your family is wealthy, im assuming this does not mean that they have £10,000,000 to let you play around with haha.

If you want to create a compnay so much, have you ever thought of simply starting something that is slightly out of your field, because anything to do with structural engineering is going to be highly complex and with large start up capital. You don't have to do something engineering related.

Reply 12

malakian452

Considering no one who graduates from medicine starts their own practice straight away, I doubt the same will apply for engineers. Its more to do with getting a CEng and then see what happens after that (Most start there own firm in 30's or 40's).

Reply 13

Justintabib

dreamer*girl

could i launch succesfully my company at around 28 years old?

finish my engineering degree -> 22 years old (takes 4 years)

That's very realistic if you join uni at around 18-19.

dreamer*girl

MBA -> 23 years old (takes one year)

That's impossible because although MBA takes 1 full year to complete (if you do a FULL MBA that is), you need to have at least 3 years (Cambridge MBA says their MBA students have an average of 5 years post grad work experience) of post-graduation work experience involving management opportunities. Now, just to mention, that part-time or full-time jobs at bars, cafes or any similar stores (eg. cash tills at Sainsbury's) usually fall out of this category. Though I'm not sure if an administrative clerical job would count.

Realistically, you need to gain real-time work experience following your graduation for 3 or more years, showing an active interest in management or related disciplines (favourably involving in team management) and forging good contacts with your seniors and other co-workers. This will ensure you will have good peer and supervisor references while applying for a MBA in good unis. Maybe you wouldn't need your company to sponsor you, but in a lot of cases they do and you can put that £15k-£30k in your account instead of paying it to the uni concerned.

dreamer*girl

experience -> about 5 years? i'll hopefully get chartered, and i will probably have enough experience to launch my company at around 28.

is that realistic? :confused:

any opinions would be appreciated :smile:

As for the chartership, it's better to work for a company which is approved by the concerned engineering body, example IMechE. This way, all your work will be monitored and after a minimum of 2 years, you can apply for chartership. However, in most cases, chartered engineers have 3 or more years of monitored work and training following their graduation before applying for chartership.

I have some case studies of chartered engineers, and you can also get them if you navigate websites like www.imeche.org or alternatively, PM me and I will send them to you.

Your course should be a MEng to satisfy the academic requirements of chartership, or you need to have a post-grad qualification to fulfill it. Maybe you know this already.

So it is likely that you graduate at 22,
become a Chartered Engineer at 26-27,
do a MBA at minimum 25 (but usually around 26-28),

and start your own company in your late 20s or early 30s (at the earliest).
But just because you have MBA and a CEng status doesnt mean you can start your business straightaway, so maybe you may feel you need to have more experience of how a company functions and how you can manage it before starting your own. In that case, you may as well start your company in your late 30s or even 40s!
Wish you all the best!

Reply 14

dreamer*girl

Justintabib

That's very realistic if you join uni at around 18-19.

That's impossible because although MBA takes 1 full year to complete (if you do a FULL MBA that is), you need to have at least 3 years (Cambridge MBA says their MBA students have an average of 5 years post grad work experience) of post-graduation work experience involving management opportunities. Now, just to mention, that part-time or full-time jobs at bars, cafes or any similar stores (eg. cash tills at Sainsbury's) usually fall out of this category. Though I'm not sure if an administrative clerical job would count.

Realistically, you need to gain real-time work experience following your graduation for 3 or more years, showing an active interest in management or related disciplines (favourably involving in team management) and forging good contacts with your seniors and other co-workers. This will ensure you will have good peer and supervisor references while applying for a MBA in good unis. Maybe you wouldn't need your company to sponsor you, but in a lot of cases they do and you can put that £15k-£30k in your account instead of paying it to the uni concerned.

As for the chartership, it's better to work for a company which is approved by the concerned engineering body, example IMechE. This way, all your work will be monitored and after a minimum of 2 years, you can apply for chartership. However, in most cases, chartered engineers have 3 or more years of monitored work and training following their graduation before applying for chartership.

I have some case studies of chartered engineers, and you can also get them if you navigate websites like www.imeche.org or alternatively, PM me and I will send them to you.

Your course should be a MEng to satisfy the academic requirements of chartership, or you need to have a post-grad qualification to fulfill it. Maybe you know this already.

So it is likely that you graduate at 22,
become a Chartered Engineer at 26-27,
do a MBA at minimum 25 (but usually around 26-28),

and start your own company in your late 20s or early 30s (at the earliest).
But just because you have MBA and a CEng status doesnt mean you can start your business straightaway, so maybe you may feel you need to have more experience of how a company functions and how you can manage it before starting your own. In that case, you may as well start your company in your late 30s or even 40s!
Wish you all the best!

wow! thanx! that was really helpful :smile:

i'll see what i do.. i am still 17, so i have enough time to think bout it :biggrin:

i'll finish my degree and then see what to do next.
thanx again! :tsr2:

Reply 15

thefish_uk

I did some work experience with an engineering company in the summer, from which a few people had, over the years, gone off to form their own companies. Yes you definitely need a chartered engineer on board as otherwise the work you do isn't going to be taken seriously from a legal point of view. Also I got the impression that all of the people doing this were aged 40+ and often began partnerships with a colleague or two. There's a hell of a lot of on-the-job learning with engineeirng; yes your uni course teaches you to analyse stresses and strains but most likely not the ins and outs of the various British Standards (and, by the time we graduate, Eurocodes).

Also I noticed engineering is something of a cliquey profession - for example amongst all the different consultancies in a city everyone knows everybody else. So in order to get respect, which you'd need to get your own consultancy off the ground, you'd need to earn it from people who've been engineering for years.

Regarding chartership, I know that you can go for IStructE or ICE. IStructE require you to sit a killer exam (I don't know what the pass rate is but I do know many people fail). ICE insist that you attend some killer interviews. Apparently unless you completely blow them away it is very rare for ICE to charter anyone under 30.

Best of luck anyway... if you have ambitions of being your own boss from the start it's probably easier in product design... or maybe I've been watching too much Dragons' Den.