How do I set my consultancy rates?

[hairykrishna]

I know this is one of those 'how long is a piece of string?' questions...

I've been asked to do a bit of consulting outside of my normal work and I'm struggling to know what level to set my fees at. I did bits and pieces of web design and some coding on the side in the past and, fairly arbitrarily, charged at ~£150 a day.

However this is considerably more specialised (nuclear modelling), and my normal salary is higher these days, so it feels like I should be charging more! What's the going rate for an scientific/engineering consultant?

[ewenm]

You could use the usual IT contractor rule-of-thumb where your hourly rate is the annual salary rate of the permie role divided by 1000. So for example if a permie doing the role would be paid £40k, then an approx hourly contract rate would be £40/h. Perhaps do this for your salary and then adjust for "reasonableness"

[contractor]

The /1000 thing is woefully inadequate and is very wide of the mark for a host of reasons not worth getting into here.

Can I suggest you look at the jobs boards for your particular skillset and go from there. If there are only permie jobs try

http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/contract.aspx?page=1&...

[deckster]

contractor said:

The /1000 thing is woefully inadequate and is very wide of the mark for a host of reasons not worth getting into here.

Can I suggest you look at the jobs boards for your particular skillset and go from there. If there are only permie jobs try

http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/contract.aspx?page=1&...

Conversely, I've always found advertised rates to be complete fiction and bear very little relation to real life, particularly for scarce skillsets (which generally speaking don't ever make it as far as the job sites).

Obviously salary/1000 is only a very rough guide but it's a good place to start in my experience.

[hairykrishna]

Cheers all. I'll go with my salary/1000 ph and see what they say.

[lestag]

useful link? http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...