Tellett Engineering Consultants Ltd (T3ec) - St. Neots

Jordan B.

We're using Tellett's on recommendation from our architects. Long story short: we're happy with the overall price and the service received from the their director, Dave Turner.

There was some negative aspects to it, mostly an unfortunate series of events which meant that our assigned engineer changed, to someone who wasn't commissioned to come to site.

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The positives:
– seems to work well with our architect
– produced good calculations (using Tekla Tedds) and clear section drawings of connections
– haven't over specified the widths of steel needed
– when dealing with Dave T, problems got remedied!

The negatives:
– communication with the client was poor with the other engineer
– our contact there changed multiple times without notifying us, and the person doing the calcs has not visited site.
– generally hasn't seemed to think of any cost saving designs or at least explain the situation
– follow on work has been expensive

Communication
Originally they charged an invoice for the full work when only half of it had been completed without mentioning this. Only by questioning this, did they reveal that their engineer had injured himself and only inspected half the building and only produced calculations for that half. This was unfortunate, and I'd generally give the benefit of the doubt that this was just miscommunicated. They followed up and completed the work within that cost.

However since then, we've had several other people involved and it's not been clear who our point of contact is. Things have had to move fast, so some confusion is expected, but in comparison to our designer or builder who will jump on the phone, I've found that I get a reply as a short email within 1-2 working days, often without addressing the points raised.

Follow on work
We've had to change the design after the first round of calculations, and this revealed some difficulties with working with them. They charged by the hour, on work occasionally going down the wrong path, meaning that amends to an existing scheme have now cost nearly as much the original fixed price for the whole design. Better communication of what was going on would help alleviate this, but I feel like they're no longer value for money after this.

Not seeing cost savings
Maybe i'm being optimistic about this point, but I feel a good structural engineer, like a good builder/architect, should be looking to ways to achieve the same result in a cost effective manner. There are a few designs here that it took a builder to question. On bringing this back to T3ec, they agreed that that seemed like a sensible thing to do... raising the question of why they didn't suggest it themselves before. I've had a friendly chartered engineer help me understand the design and I'm still surprised at how quick they are to jump to quite an expensive construction without, I feel, exploring simple practical fixes. Again, maybe if communication was better to explain all the options they wrote off, i'd appreciate their conclusions but right now builder is "shocked" they'd specify it to such a high level.

update 30/11: We insisted on a site visit as clearly there was a disconnect between their recommendations and the facts on the ground. Our assigned engineer was apparently on furlough but we insisted someone else be assigned to our case anyway. Gratefully, we got one of the partners, Dave, a nice guy, who did come to site. Within 20 minutes, much of the mess was cleaned up. He said the previous work was bad: "like sticking a bandage on a cast on a plaster" or words to that effect. i.e. it was an overengineered mess when a simpler solution should clearly have been suggested from the start. On one hand this was validating, on the other hand this was very frustrating as this digression had cost us significant time and money. On the positive side, the partner has been amicable to deal with and I'm pleased that final structural design is not compromised. They have not charged for the bad work that created this situation so overall I'm pleased with the resulting structural design and the overall cost.

Eric F.