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Work backwards from how well you know the scope. If you can write down exactly what you want handed over and it is a known, bounded piece of work — a drawing conversion, a single load calculation, a DFM review — buy a service, because the scope is already published including its exclusions. If you know the problem but not the method, post a project and let engineers propose methodologies you can compare. If you want a specific named specialist for ongoing advisory, find an engineer and contract directly. If the work spans disciplines, needs professional indemnity cover, or is heading toward certified sign-off, hire a firm or an assembled team. The most common mistake is buying a fixed-scope service for work whose scope genuinely depends on files nobody has looked at yet.

Discipline and specialisations, secondary disciplines, software with the versions you actually work in, design standards you have genuinely worked to, industries with completed project counts, deliverable types you produce, education, professional registrations, certifications, association memberships, delivery modes including whether you travel, availability and current capacity, and an about section that states your competence boundaries. Profiles that state what the engineer does not do convert better than profiles that claim everything, because clients are trying to eliminate candidates, not collect them.

Yes on both sides. Clients pay nothing to post projects, receive matches, interview, or compare proposals, and nothing for the workroom — only a 3% processing fee on funded milestones. Engineers pay nothing to build a profile, get verified on identity and education, or submit proposals; a transaction fee applies to earnings. Full detail is on the pricing page.

Median time to a first proposal is under 48 hours on a well-specified brief. Briefs missing the governing standard, the jurisdiction, or a description of what input data exists take substantially longer, because qualified engineers will not quote on an unbounded scope. If you have had no proposals after four days, the brief is almost always the cause rather than the market.

Yes. Paid consultations are 30 to 60 minute calls with a specialist, including a written recommendation memo afterwards. They are frequently the cheapest useful thing a client can buy, because a specialist will often tell you the work is smaller, or differently shaped, than you assumed. There is no obligation to continue with the same engineer.

Four things carry most of the weight. First, name the governing standard and the edition — 'to Eurocode 3' and 'to EN 1993-1-1:2005+A1:2014' produce different proposals. Second, state the jurisdiction, because it determines who can certify anything. Third, list the input data that actually exists today, including its format and whether it is trustworthy: 'a 2011 PDF of as-builts, accuracy unverified' is far more useful than 'drawings available'. Fourth, state explicitly whether professional sign-off is required, because it changes who is even eligible. Everything else is detail; those four determine whether you get comparable proposals.

Leave it blank. Anything unspecified is recorded and displayed as unspecified rather than silently assumed, and engineers will raise it as a question on the project. A guessed answer is worse than an open one, because a proposal priced against a wrong assumption produces a change request later.

Yes, as a range, and be honest about it. A stated range filters out engineers whose rates make the project impossible and lets the rest scope their methodology to fit. Hidden budgets do not produce better prices; they produce proposals pitched at the wrong scale that you then have to discard. If you genuinely do not know, say so and ask proposers to price two options at different levels of rigour.

A project can be public, private to engineers you invite, or NDA-gated so documents are released only once an NDA is executed through the platform. Individual files carry their own access levels within any of those, so you can publish a general description while keeping the drawing set restricted. Restricted documents can be shown as watermarked previews with download disabled, and all access is logged.

You can edit a brief freely before the first proposal arrives. After that, edits are versioned and everyone who has proposed is notified of what changed, so proposers can revise. Once you award, the brief is frozen as the contract baseline and further changes go through the change request flow — this is deliberate, because a silently edited scope is the most common source of disputes on technical work.

Three to six is the practical range. Below three you have no comparison; above eight you are imposing unpaid proposal work on people who cannot win and your response rate falls, because experienced engineers can see how many others were invited.

Yes, and you should when it matters. Mandatory requirements are enforced at matching: engineers without the verified registration will not appear and cannot propose. Be careful to require what the work genuinely needs — an unnecessary mandatory registration can reduce your candidate pool to nothing in some jurisdictions.

Every proposer answers the same structured questions: methodology, declared assumptions, software and version, standards applied, deliverable list, explicit exclusions, milestone plan, schedule and price. Those answers populate one comparison table, so you are comparing engineering approaches on the same axes rather than reading six differently structured documents. Exclusions are displayed with the same prominence as deliverables.

The composite percentage is the least useful number on the screen. Read the axes: discipline, software, standards, industry, jurisdiction, availability and licence, each showing whether it met your requirement and why. An engineer at 78% who meets every hard requirement and lost points only on jurisdiction is a completely different candidate from one at 82% who lacks the governing standard. The breakdown exists so you can make that distinction.

It is checkable by someone who did not do the work. 'Report is of good quality' is not a criterion. 'Report includes governing load combinations per EN 1990 Table A1.2(B), utilisation ratios for every member exceeding 0.85, and a statement of all assumed material properties with their source' is. Write them before work starts, agree them in writing at award, and derive them from the deliverable list rather than inventing them at review time.

A revision corrects work that does not yet meet the agreed acceptance criteria — it is within scope and within the revision allowance you agreed, at no extra cost. A change request covers work outside the agreed scope: a new load case, a different standard, an extra drawing, a re-run after your input data changed. A change request must state its cost and schedule impact and be accepted before the work is performed. Conflating the two is the single most common cause of disputes, in both directions.

Each milestone should end in something you can inspect and judge. A good pattern on design work is: design basis and assumptions memo, then preliminary sizing or concept, then detailed calculations, then the drawing or model package, then final issue with the revision register. Avoid milestones defined by elapsed time, and avoid a single milestone for anything over about three weeks — neither gives you an inspection point before most of the money is committed.

This is why declared assumptions are a required proposal field. If an assumption stated in the proposal proves incorrect because reality differed from it, the consequent rework is a change request and you pay for it. If it proves incorrect because the engineer assumed something contradicted by information you supplied, that is a revision at their cost. The written record decides it, which is why declaring assumptions protects both sides.

Yes. Multi-engineer projects can run separate contracts under one brief, each with its own milestones and acceptance, or you can hire an assembled team or firm where the interface between disciplines is somebody's explicit responsibility. If you split disciplines across independent contracts, the interfaces become your responsibility to manage — this is where multidisciplinary projects most often go wrong.

The brief freezes as the contract baseline, acceptance criteria and milestones are fixed, the first milestone is funded into escrow, and a workroom opens with the transmittal register, RFI log, approval routing and change request flow. Unsuccessful proposers are notified. From that point every scope change has a record.

Only on your acceptance of the deliverable for that milestone, or on a determination from the resolution process. There is no time-based automatic release on milestone contracts. If you neither accept nor request a revision within 14 days of submission, the engineer can escalate to review, which is an assessment against the acceptance criteria rather than an automatic release — but do not rely on inaction as a strategy, because a deliverable that meets the agreed criteria will be found to meet them.

Hours are logged against the contract with a weekly cap you set, and you receive a weekly summary with work descriptions before billing. You have a review window each week to query entries. Hours beyond the cap are not billable unless you raise the cap in advance, which means an hourly contract cannot silently overrun.

Engineers pay a transaction fee on earnings — 10% standard, 7% on Engineer Pro, tapering in bands on larger contracts. Clients pay 3% payment processing on funded milestones, or 2.4% on ACH and SEPA direct debit, and nothing on Enterprise consolidated invoicing. Posting, matching, proposing and the workroom are free. The pricing page has the complete schedule including verification, promoted placement and withdrawal fees.

Unaccepted, escrowed funds can be refunded by agreement at any time, and the transaction fee on a refunded milestone is refunded with it. Accepted milestones are not automatically refundable, because acceptance is the point at which you confirmed the deliverable met the agreed criteria. Where a deliverable is accepted and a defect is discovered afterwards, that is a dispute rather than a refund request, and the resolution process assesses it against what was contracted.

Released funds are available for withdrawal after a five-day settlement hold. Standard bank transfer is free above $100 and $2 below it, intermediary-bank wires are $12, and currency conversion is 1.5% over the mid-market rate where the payout currency differs from the contract currency.

Yes. Platform-generated invoices are produced for every contract, with your own registration and tax details included where you have provided them. Tax documentation is collected before first payout. Enterprise workspaces receive consolidated monthly invoices matched to PO lines and cost centres rather than per-transaction receipts. The platform does not provide tax advice and cannot determine your tax position for you.

You control it per file. Access levels range from visible on the public project posting, through visible to invited engineers, to released only after an NDA is executed through the platform. Restricted documents can be issued as watermarked previews with download disabled. Every access event is logged, and the log is available to you.

A transmittal is a formal, recorded issue of documents from one party to another with a revision number, a date, a stated purpose — for information, for review, for construction — and a recipient list. It is how engineering documents have always been controlled, and it exists so that six months later there is no argument about which revision anybody was working from. Every file issue in the workroom is a transmittal with a revision history attached.

Whatever the contract says, which is why IP ownership is an intake field rather than an afterthought. The default for platform contracts is that IP in the deliverables transfers to the client on full payment, with the engineer retaining their pre-existing tools, templates, libraries and general know-how. Different arrangements can be agreed, and Enterprise workspaces can set a standard position that every contract in the workspace inherits.

Both parties keep access to the contract record and its transmittals for seven years by default, which matters because engineering disputes and defect claims surface long after completion. You can export the complete record at any time. NDA-gated documents remain subject to the NDA's terms after completion, including any obligation to destroy copies — the platform's retention of the record does not override your NDA obligations.

Each badge records one specific check. Identity verified means a government ID or equivalent was confirmed. Education verified means a qualification was confirmed with the issuing institution. Licence verified means a professional registration was confirmed with the issuing authority. Certification verified means a named certification was confirmed as current. Portfolio verified means ownership of submitted work was confirmed. Reference verified means clients or employers were contacted. Expert vetted means a discipline expert reviewed a work sample. The verification page sets out the full ladder.

No, and this is the most important answer on this page. A marketplace badge is not a licence to practise and confers no legal authority to stamp, seal or certify work in any jurisdiction. The platform is not a licensing body, not a regulator and not an engineering firm. Where local law requires a registered professional to certify work, that certification must come from someone registered in that jurisdiction, acting under their own professional responsibility and insurance. Confirming that a given engineer holds the authorisations your project requires is your responsibility as the client.

Identity is usually under an hour. Education takes two to five business days depending on the institution. Professional registration is same-day where an integrated register exists and up to ten business days where a manual check with an authority is required. Certification is one to three days. Discipline expert review is five to seven days because it involves a specialist reading real work.

Where we have an integrated register, the badge is withdrawn on the day the register shows the lapse. Where checks are manual, badges carry an expiry and stop displaying as current at that date, with a reminder sequence beforehand. A lapsed badge is removed rather than shown as expired, because a stale badge is worse than no badge.

Identity verification is required before you can be paid. Everything beyond that is optional, but it is strongly correlated with winning work: clients filter on it constantly, and a project requiring a verified registration is invisible to engineers who do not hold one. Identity and education verification are free.

Request a revision first, always, if the issue is that the deliverable does not yet meet the agreed acceptance criteria. That is what revisions are for, and most issues resolve there. Open a case when revisions have been exhausted or refused, when the parties disagree about what the contract actually required, when work has stopped without explanation, or when there is an allegation of misconduct such as plagiarised or misrepresented work.

Escrowed funds stay in escrow. They are not released to either party until the case concludes, so opening a case does not put funds at risk on either side. This is deliberate: neither party should have an incentive to rush a case for cash-flow reasons.

The contract baseline, the proposal including its declared assumptions and exclusions, the acceptance criteria, the transmittal record with revisions, the RFI log, change requests and their status, and the delivered files. Chat messages are read but carry far less weight than the formal record, which is precisely why the formal record exists. Evidence created after a case opens is treated with caution.

A dispute resolution specialist with a relevant technical background assesses the case against what was contracted, and complex technical disputes can be referred to an independent discipline expert. Both parties have five business days to submit, and the determination is issued within ten business days of submissions closing. The determination is written, reasoned and specific about which contractual requirement was or was not met. One appeal is available on new evidence or a procedural error.

Full release, partial release proportionate to the work that met the criteria, full refund, or a directed revision with a deadline. Determinations cannot award damages beyond the escrowed contract value, cannot rule on matters outside the platform contract, and do not constitute a legal judgment or arbitral award. Nothing in the process removes either party's right to pursue legal remedies, and the resolution process is not a substitute for legal advice.

You set your state as available, limited or booked, plus a free-text capacity statement such as 'two days per week from mid-October'. Availability affects match scoring: booked engineers score lower and can be filtered out entirely. Engineer Pro adds finer controls, including auto-switching to limited above a concurrent contract count you set.

Do not share credentials. Team access on client accounts gives each person their own login with a role — requester, technical reviewer, approver, finance or administrator. Enterprise workspaces add SSO with SCIM provisioning, granular permissions and separation of duties between scoping, acceptance and payment.

Engineer Pro can be cancelled at any time from subscription settings and runs until the end of the paid period; there is no partial refund for a cancelled period. Pro features that depend on the subscription, such as the reduced transaction fee, revert at the end of the period. Contracts signed while on Pro keep the Pro fee rate for their remaining milestones.

Yes. A full export covers your profile, contracts, transmittals, messages, reviews and payment history in machine-readable formats. Requests are typically fulfilled within 48 hours. The privacy policy sets out your data rights in detail, including access, correction, portability and erasure, and how to raise a request.

Open contracts must be completed, cancelled by agreement or resolved before closure. Your public profile is removed, and your identifiable information is deleted or anonymised except where we are required to retain records — contract and payment records are retained for seven years for legal, tax and dispute purposes. Reviews you wrote remain, anonymised, because deleting them would misrepresent the counterparty's record.