So your organisation is stepping up its mapping game shifting from taking Google Earth screenshots and using Avenza maps in the field to a more sophisticated GIS solution. Perhaps you want to integrate QGIS or ArcGIS into your workflow. The hope is that you can hire an in-house GIS guru and craft professional maps and maintain a top-tier mobile mapping solution for your team. After all, that would be cheaper than hiring a consultant right? Well, in the post below, we hope to highlight how economical it is to hire a GIS consultant.
But, GIS consultants are expensive, right?
On an hour-by-hour basis. Yes, a GIS consultant would be more expensive than the hourly rate you pay your in-house GIS person. But as any contractor will tell you, comparing a consultants rate to an employees hourly rate is not apples to apples. You need to factor in the total cost of the employee such as entitlements, software, hardware, rental space and most significantly, downtime for when they are not productive. This might be training, admin, low work capacity, etc. All of which are adding to that hourly rate.
The numbers
Lets look at some numbers. Your employee is paid $80,000 AUD per year (which includes entitlements). This is not a graduate level pay cheque, but it is far from senior. An employee in this ballpark will be early career and still learning the ropes. Now factor in $10,000 for software, $10,000 for hardware and desk facilities, and suddenly that number is piling up. You’re in the hole $100,000 for that position (exact figures will vary, but we’re going for a round number here). This employee can give you a maximum of 1,760 hours of work per year (52 weeks in a year, minus 4 weeks annual leave, minus 2 weeks sick leave, minus 2 weeks of public holidays at 8 hours per day). Now let’s factor in that the person is probably not 100% efficient and they have downtime, as mentioned above. This could be business admin, training, low work availability, or whatever. If they are 80% efficient, they can offer you 1,408 hours of work per year. This means to break even, they cost $71.02 per hour.
Let’s say our GIS consultant starts at $90.00 per hour. I would suggest that is ballpark equivalent to the skill level of the employee discussed above. Then yes, the consultant is more expensive, but not by as much as you probably thought before reading this. And there is more to consider ...
Productivity
So your in-house GIS analyst costs you $71.02 per hour (before considering profit). They are dedicated to cartography (map making). We estimate that in the 1,408 hours per year that they can offer you, that they can produce about 470 maps (3 hours per map). Of course some maps are faster, some are done in batches, but there is also a lot of analysis and work that goes into some so we feel this is a reasonable number. For those 470 maps, at $90.00 per hour, a GIS consultant would cost you $126,900.00 which is more than the employee.
The case for the GIS consultant
There are four significant factors that favour small organisations opting for a GIS consultant over an in-house GIS analyst:
Experience
We mentioned above that your employee would be an early career GIS analyst. By engaging a consultant, you typically get someone far more experienced in their career. But even if they are not, you need to consider that unless you hire a freelance individual, you are probably getting a consultant who is working in a GIS dedicated team. Their passion is GIS and they know the subject in and out. If one person does not know the answer to something, they have a huge knowledge base with decades of experience to leverage. Your in-house GIS analyst is on their own, requiring them to spend more time doing on-the-job training, looking for answers on their own.
Resources
GIS consultants have all the tools. You need that expensive software to run some analysis? The consultant will have it. Need to leverage a mobile mapping solution, but don’t want to buy the whole package? Get a seat in the consultants hosted environment. Consultants share the burden of software and resources across many clients meaning the overheads are negligible on a per client basis.
Admin and downtime
Where your in-house GIS analyst needs to spend a lot of time building and maintaining an organisation GIS, a GIS consultant manages their own GIS environment. Meaning you don’t directly pay for their downtime, but you do benefit from a professionally administered GIS with the skills of many operators poured into it.
Scaleability
The biggest factor, is scalability. Your small business isn’t going to go from no GIS, to a full-time analyst in one swoop. By engaging a GIS consultant for your mapping needs, you can can increase the demand in a very scaleable way. Perhaps it starts with a few random map requests. Paying per map, or by the hour is an even more scalable way of getting the job done while your organisation is growing. And then when the time comes for you to get your own GIS analyst, you may consider keeping the consultant on hand for the more complex workflows.
These factors are all presented in the graphic below:
The scalability of engaging TerraLab for map production
Using the formula and figures we’ve mentioned above, the breakeven point isn’t reached until you are producing about 2,000 maps per year. Recall that we said at 3 hours per map, your in-house GIS analyst could complete about 470? So to break even you would need a team of about 4 GIS analysts.
Here at TerraLab, we are a team of GIS consultants who want to make maps. We want to work with spatial data. We want to build useful things. Let us supplement your core skills by supporting your mapping needs. Check out our cartography page, or reach out to discuss how we can help you.