Once you have watched a few engineering-required jobs go somewhere else, you have to decide what to do about it. There are four common answers, and contractors mostly arrive at one of them by drift rather than by choosing. The one you drift into is usually the one that keeps everything the way it is. Laid out next to each other they are easier to weigh.
The four paths on the table
1. Keep turning down the work
What it is. You pass on anything with engineering in the scope and stay with what you can self-perform.
The trade-off. Nothing today, which is what makes it comfortable. It also puts a ceiling on the business without ever feeling like a decision anybody made, and that ceiling keeps dropping as more owners write engineering into their specs.
2. Call a firm when a spec catches you
What it is. You scramble for an engineering firm whenever an RFP includes something you can't cover.
The trade-off. It gets a number on the bid, and it is the worst of the four. No relationship, nobody who knows your work, and no time to do the engineering properly. You pay a premium for the rush on top of that.
3. Hire an engineer on staff
What it is. Bring the capability in-house with a full-time licensed hire.
The trade-off. For a firm with steady, predictable engineering work in one or two areas this can be exactly right. The catch is breadth. Arc flash modeling, protection coordination, power quality and relay commissioning are separate disciplines, and any one engineer is strong in some of them and thin in others. You also need enough consistent work to keep a salary busy.
4. Build a standing partnership with an engineering firm
What it is. One primary firm you bring in project by project, with the fee marked up or passed through in your bid the way any subcontract would be.
The trade-off. It deals with the breadth problem, because a firm carries a range of specialties rather than one person's skill set, and it scales with your workload instead of sitting on your books. You are also one of several clients, which is why responsiveness matters more than the rate on the first proposal.
Which path fits your firm
The first two leave you where you started. Only the last two put engineering into what you can sell, and only one of those scales without fixed overhead.
If your engineering work is steady, narrow and predictable, a hire will carry it. If it is varied or growing, a partnership covers more ground for less fixed cost. And if you are still passing on the work, the useful question is how much of it you turned away last year, weighed against what you could have gone after.
One question separates a partnership you can build on from one that will eventually cost you. Ask whether the firm also does electrical contracting.