ROI Methodology

Where the £175k / 2,080 hours figure comes from

The headline ROI Calculator number is built from line items we can defend in front of a UK HV director with a spreadsheet open on the next monitor. This page shows the underlying maths so you can sanity-check it against your own firm.

1. What an HV engineer actually costs you

A UK HV design engineer's fully loaded cost (salary, employer NI at 15%, minimum pension at 3%, recoverable-time loss, overheads) is typically £65,000 to £85,000 per year. At 1,650 billable hours that is roughly £40-£52 per hour of pure design time. Senior engineers and principals sit closer to £90-£150 per hour.

Design engineer / senior engineer rate: £105/hr fully loaded
Director / principal decision time: £150/hr fully loaded
Ops / compliance coordination time: £70/hr fully loaded

2. Hours lost per week per engineer

Our own data from Saqib Engineering and conversations with peer UK HV consultancies shows admin overhead of 8-12 hours per engineer per week. That is one whole working day, every week, gone to:

DNO enquiry triage, RFQ drafting and quotation writing
NEC4 RFI tracking, programme updates and meeting admin
NERS evidence capture, ISO 9001 procedure upkeep and CDM coordination
Document control, drawing register maintenance and CDE housekeeping
Subcontractor compliance checks, IR35 reviews and supplier onboarding

3. The 3-engineer firm worked example

A typical small UK HV consultancy with 3 working engineers:

3 engineers x 10 hrs/wk x 48 weeks x £40/hr = £57,600/year of admin time

That is the conservative floor. It captures only the hourly recoverable cost of admin time. It does not capture the second-order losses below.

4. The second-order losses

The hourly cost is the part you can see on a timesheet. The bigger losses are usually invisible:

Missed tenders: a typical UK HV framework PQQ takes 30-40 hours. Firms with admin overload submit fewer per year. Even one missed framework appointment can be six figures of lost revenue.
Late RFI responses: NEC4 clause 60.1(1) makes late client communication a compensation event risk. Average payout on a single CE in UK HV substation work is £8,000-£25,000.
NERS audit failures: a non-conformity that leads to a partial scope suspension typically costs £15,000-£50,000 in remedial work, lost framework eligibility and reaccreditation cost.
Founder / director burnout: Sunday evening admin time you can never bill, and the strategic decisions that don't get made because you are answering the inbox.

5. Total addressable waste

Stack the line items for a typical 3-engineer firm:

Line item	Annual cost
Admin time across the team	£57,600
Missed tender / framework revenue	£30,000-£60,000
NEC4 RFI / CE exposure	£15,000-£30,000
NERS / ISO audit risk	£15,000-£50,000
Total addressable waste	£150,000-£200,000

Larger firms scale this linearly with engineer count - 6 engineers double the bill, not just the admin.

6. OpsWork cost vs return

OpsWork Foundation is £2,495/month on a 12-month commitment, monthly billing, no per-seat pricing. Annualised:

Annual cost:        £29,940
Total waste range:  £150,000-£200,000
ROI multiple:       5x - 7x in year one
Payback period:     ~3 months for a 3-engineer firm

Standard tier (£4,995/mo) for firms with 6+ engineers or significant NEC4 / ICP exposure. Enterprise (£9,995/mo) for EPC turnkey delivery with multi-million-pound project exposure.

7. What this number is not

It is not a guarantee. Saving depends on the firm actually adopting the agents - Emma for BD, Sarah for compliance, James for NEC4, Robert for engineering coordination, Michael for commercial, Paul for HR / admin.
It does not double-count. Sunday evening recovery is allocated within the headline, not added to it.
It excludes upside we can't easily quantify - faster quote turnaround, better client perception, reduced audit-week stress.
It assumes UK HV work. The same maths applies to LV and distribution work but the rates and audit costs are different.

Run your own numbers in the ROI Calculator - six inputs, no spreadsheet.