tomeaton17:

Hello IET Members. 


I am currently in the third year of my undergraduate EEE course. I have been approached by a company, where I was an intern before university, to design a small PCB for them. 


They are asking me for a quote. As I have not entered the world of work yet, I do not know what is a reasonable hourly rate for PCB design consultation, especially someone at my stage in the career. 


So, could other members give me a ballpark figure of how much I should be charging per hour?


Many thanks,


Tom

As an electrician I charge for parts, plus a mark up, plus an hourly rate. So if you work for 2 hours making the item you charge say £100.00 plus parts. If this is a "one off" prototype  then you can charge more than if it is a production run of say 100, as then you will have to be very competitive, as you will be quoting against other possible suppliers. You could ask other companies what they charge for a similar item to get an idea of currents costs, or look in electronic sales' catalogues or online. If sourced from say China the cost of a similar circuit board will be very inexpensive. Do not forget hidden costs like carriage, insurance, heating and lighting and any consumables or tools etc.


Consultants can earn big bucks, so do not undersell yourself. Also do not let the company steal your design and not pay you. Perhaps you could make a working prototype and then encapsulate it (pot it) just to show it working, but that method hides its essential component parts.


If just providing circuit  diagrams charge an hourly rate for your work. You should not work for nothing.


Z.


 

• They will expect it done in a reasonable time, make sure you absolutely can fit it around your uni commitments,

• They will expect it to be done to commercial quality, so all files made available to them in a tidy format,

• If you make any errors in the design you may need to rework them at your own expense - so agree with them what the definition of "correct" is. I'd suggest you want to make sure that someone at their end is going to check the layout and agree it before they get it built so that it's not all your responsibility if it doesn't work. (If you literally manage not to connect two tracks together which are shown in the design that's your fault. If two components electrically interfere with each other because they are too close together, resulting in a complete re-layout being required, you don't want to carry all the responsibility for that.)