In aviation and engineering, there’s a strange badge of honour that comes with securing the “lowest day rate.” We see it time and again: procurement departments comparing consultants by the hour, proud of shaving a few pounds or dollars off the fee.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: when you’re dealing with multi-million-dollar engines, chasing the lowest rate is often the most expensive decision you can make.
The Illusion of Simplicity
Recently, we were asked to provide a quotation for an engine evaluation to a leasing company. Their response?
“Do you have an hourly or daily rate we can use? Based on our experience a project like this would take 4–5 hours.”
On the surface, it sounds reasonable. A few hours, a quick report, and the box is ticked. But that’s not how engines, or financial risk work.
Every engine evaluation involves multiple permutations and long-term financial considerations:
- Should the shop visit even be performed, or should the engine be sold and parted out?
- If a shop visit is performed, should the build life be reduced to balance costs and residual value?
- What is the carcass value of the engine today versus in four years’ time?
- How do reserve funds, cost exposure risks and end-of-life valuations change the equation?
A “4-hour review” won’t give you these answers. It will give you a false sense of confidence.
Experience Is the Difference
Our co-founder, Trish Gray, has spent over 42 years in this industry. She’s provided valuations accepted in court for insurance claims, including the recent Russian aircraft cases. She’s advised lessors, airlines and OEMs where the smallest decision could swing millions of dollars.
Her ethos, and ours as a business, is simple:
“Know your engine, control your costs.”
That means looking beyond the obvious. It means stress-testing every scenario. It means having the courage to ask, “What if we’re wrong?” before you sign off on a decision.
The Real Cost of “Cheap”
Let’s do the maths.
A rushed, 4-hour evaluation might save you a few thousand pounds compared to a full analysis. But if that shortcut leads you to perform an unnecessary shop visit, miss a carcass value opportunity, or underestimate future costs, the loss could run into the millions.
Is that really a saving?
The Value Mindset Shift
What we’re calling for in aviation isn’t radical, it’s common sense and as aviation tells us never assume. Stop measuring consultancy by hours. Start measuring by proven outcomes.
- The question isn’t: How many hours will this take?
- The question is: What is the cost of being wrong?
We’re not saying that every evaluation must be exhaustive. Sometimes, a quick “go/no go” review is all that’s needed and something that can be achieved much faster by a specialist engineer that knows what to look for. However when the stakes are high, the value of deep experience, rigorous financial modelling and independent judgment is immeasurable compared to the “day rate race to the bottom.”
Why This Keeps Happening
If this mindset feels familiar, it’s because it runs deep in the DNA of engineering culture.
For decades, engineers have been taught to think in hours, drawings, and deliverables, inputs — not outcomes. They’re measured by precision and efficiency, not by the size of the financial or strategic impact they create.
When you spend your career in environments where mistakes can have significant safety implications and accuracy is rewarded, you learn to be humble and cautious. Talking about “value” can even feel uncomfortable, like marketing fluff.
As a result, there’s a quiet epidemic of undervaluing expertise in engineering sectors and specifically within the aviation sector. Brilliant people with decades of hard-won experience discount their own judgment because they can’t “measure” it in a spreadsheet. They default to low day rates because that’s what the industry seems to respect and sometimes demand.
But what’s really happening is this: we’ve confused modesty with value neutrality.
Experience isn’t an expense line. It’s an insurance policy against the cost of being wrong.
That’s why this conversation matters far beyond one quotation or one project. It’s about shifting how our entire industry thinks about worth.
(We’ll explore this more in an upcoming piece: “Why Engineers Undervalue Themselves — and What It’s Costing the Industry.”)
Why Valuing Expertise Matters More Than Ever
There’s another reason this conversation is so important right now — the rise of AI.
Artificial intelligence is already transforming the way we gather data, analyse trends and even diagnose technical problems. Tasks that once gave junior engineers essential exposure and hands-on learning are now being automated or outsourced to algorithms.
That creates a serious long-term challenge for our industry:
- Fewer junior engineers are gaining exposure to the complex, real-world decision-making that turns theory into judgment.
- Experienced engineers are starting to retire, taking with them decades of intrinsic knowledge that can’t be downloaded from a database.
- And without valuing that expertise now, both financially and culturally, we risk losing it faster than we can replace it.
AI can replicate process. It can’t replicate wisdom and experience.
The experience that allows someone to look at a work scope, spot a hidden risk, and understand its commercial and operational consequences — that’s still uniquely human. And it’s exactly what clients are paying for when they choose experience over a low day rate.
If we don’t recognise and reward that expertise, the incentive for the next generation to learn it disappears.
And when that happens, the cost of undervaluing experience won’t just show up on a balance sheet — it’ll show up in the industry’s capability gap for decades to come.
Moving the Industry Forward
We understand why leasing companies and asset managers ask about day rates. You’re under constant pressure to control costs, move quickly, and manage multiple stakeholders — all while dealing with ageing fleets, unpredictable shop visits, and rising MRO costs.
But technical consultancy doesn’t exist to make things more expensive, it exists to make the right decisions clearer. The real value isn’t in the hours spent; it’s in avoiding the decisions that quietly erode asset value over time.
When we raise the conversation from “how long will it take?” to “what’s the cost if we get this wrong?”, it’s not a sales tactic — it’s risk management as we offer the kind of partnership that protects residual value, avoids unnecessary shop visits, and prevents costly redelivery surprises.
We’re fortunate to work with leasing partners who already see technical insight as an investment rather than a line item. They know that rigorous evaluation, grounded in decades of experience, creates long-term savings measured in millions — not hours.
As AI, automation, and retirements reshape the industry, this mindset will become even more important. The wisdom, judgment, and pattern recognition of experienced engineers can’t be replaced by an algorithm. Protecting that expertise, and valuing it properly is how we secure the industry’s future talent and capability.
So yes, we’ll always be transparent about our rates. But we’ll also be transparent about our impact.
Because when you know your engines, and the value of the people assessing them — you can truly control your costs.
