How engineering firms build trust

A prospective client can recognise your qualifications, understand your experience and believe you are technically capable, yet still hesitate to appoint you. They may be unsure whether you will meet their deadlines, explain problems clearly or give advice that serves their interests.

Appointing an engineering firm involves relying on judgement the client may not be equipped to check personally. They need confidence in the people doing the work, particularly when information is incomplete, budgets are under pressure or something goes wrong.

Building trust therefore deserves deliberate attention in how an engineering firm wins and delivers work. Technical competence contributes to that trust, alongside keeping commitments, handling concerns respectfully and giving recommendations that reflect the client’s needs.

The Trust Equation, presented in The Trusted Advisor by David Maister, Charles Green and Robert Galford, provides a useful framework for examining those behaviours. It describes trustworthiness through four components:

Credibility, reliability and intimacy support trust. Higher self-orientation works against it. The equation encourages us to consider how these factors interact: someone can be knowledgeable and dependable, yet difficult to trust if their advice appears driven by their own interests.

I use it as a framework for reflection. Assigning scores can help organise a discussion, but those scores do not provide a precise measurement of someone else’s trust. The hypothetical engineering examples below show how each component can influence a relationship.

Credibility

Credibility concerns whether people believe what you say. Your qualifications, relevant experience and technical knowledge contribute, as do the questions you ask and the care you take when answering.

Imagine a building owner asking whether the existing air conditioning can serve a proposed office layout. You might suspect it can, but you have not reviewed the room loads, equipment capacities or condition of the installation.

A credible response explains what you can establish from the available information, what remains uncertain and what needs checking. That gives the client a sound basis for deciding how to proceed.

Confidently assuring them that everything will be fine may feel helpful in the moment. If subsequent checks reveal a problem, however, they have reason to question your earlier judgement.

The same principle applies to business development. A relevant case study can demonstrate credibility by explaining the problem, your firm’s contribution and the reasoning behind the solution. Broad claims about delivering outstanding results give the reader less to assess.

Credibility is weakened when you exaggerate your involvement, claim expertise you cannot support or use technical language to obscure an uncertain answer.

A practical starting point is to review how you describe your capabilities. Make your experience specific, explain recommendations clearly and acknowledge where further investigation or specialist input is needed. Clients can place more confidence in advice when they understand its basis and limits.

Reliability

Reliability concerns whether people can depend on your actions. Each commitment creates an opportunity for the client to compare what you said with what happened.

That process begins before appointment. If you agree to send a proposal on Thursday, the client can observe whether it arrives. If you promise to investigate a question after a meeting, they can see whether you return with an answer or need chasing.

These commitments may seem minor compared with delivering the engineering, but they are evidence available to someone who has not worked with you before.

During a project, reliability includes the quality and completeness of what you issue. Sending drawings on the agreed date achieves little if missing information prevents the recipient from using them.

Suppose a delayed survey threatens your design programme. Raising the problem early, explaining which information is affected and agreeing a workable response allows the client to manage the consequences. Remaining silent until the deadline passes creates an additional surprise.

Early communication does not remove responsibility for delivery. It helps the client understand what is happening and what can be done.

Reliability suffers when firms accept unrealistic deadlines to secure work, leave commitments unrecorded or repeatedly require clients to chase progress.

Before making a promise, check that you can fulfil it. Confirm the deliverable, date and relevant dependencies, then give someone responsibility for following through. If circumstances change, communicate while the client still has options.

Intimacy

Intimacy can sound out of place in engineering. Within this framework, it concerns whether someone feels safe being open with you, particularly about something difficult or uncomfortable.

A client may need to admit that they do not understand your recommendation. They may have concerns about affordability, disagreements within their organisation or doubts about an earlier decision.

How you respond affects what they are willing to tell you next.

Consider a facilities manager who asks for a controls strategy to be explained again. A patient explanation gives them room to understand and question the proposal. An impatient response, especially in front of colleagues, may persuade them to remain quiet.

Their silence can then be mistaken for agreement, leaving a concern unresolved.

You support intimacy by listening without rushing to judgement, taking questions seriously and treating sensitive information with discretion. You can ask what concerns someone about a proposal and allow them time to answer, instead of immediately defending it.

You weaken it by ridiculing questions, becoming defensive when challenged or discussing another client’s difficulties carelessly. Anyone hearing that conversation may wonder whether their own problems will receive the same treatment.

This does not require friendship or personal disclosure. Professional relationships can be candid while retaining clear boundaries.

A useful check after a meeting is whether you made it easy for the client to disagree or admit uncertainty. If every question met an explanation of why you were right, there may have been little room for an honest conversation.

Self-orientation

Self-orientation concerns how strongly your attention centres on yourself: your fee, your wish to win, your need to demonstrate expertise or your discomfort with being challenged.

Those concerns can influence your behaviour even when you have no intention of taking advantage of anyone.

Imagine a client asking whether a building needs a substantial refurbishment. Lower self-orientation means investigating the problem and explaining the reasonable options, including a smaller intervention where the evidence supports it. Your recommendation remains connected to the client’s situation even if that produces a smaller appointment.

Higher self-orientation might involve recommending your preferred service before understanding the problem, overstating urgency or steering the conversation away from an option because it offers less work.

It can also appear in ordinary meetings. An engineer may interrupt because they want to demonstrate knowledge, or spend the client’s explanation preparing their next answer. The opportunity to understand something important is lost.

Business development activities deserve the same attention. Sending an article that addresses a concern a prospect has raised can be useful. Repeatedly sending unrelated promotional material may communicate little beyond your desire for an instruction.

Being visible and being trusted are different outcomes. An activity can increase one without improving the other.

Lower self-orientation still allows you to charge properly, define your scope and challenge a client’s assumptions. Those are reasonable parts of professional practice. The question is whether your advice remains sound when the client’s best option differs from the outcome you would prefer.

Before making a recommendation, ask yourself what you would advise if the size of your appointment were unaffected by their decision.

Putting numbers to the equation

Using nominal ratings of 1 for low, 3 for medium and 5 for high, we can illustrate how the components interact. These are hypothetical scores assigned for this exercise.

Component	High-trust example	Low-trust example
Credibility	5 — High	1 — Low
Reliability	5 — High	1 — Low
Intimacy	5 — High	1 — Low
Self-orientation	1 — Low	5 — High
Calculation	(5 + 5 + 5) ÷ 1	(1 + 1 + 1) ÷ 5
Illustrative result	15	0.6

In the high-trust example, imagine an engineer who demonstrates relevant knowledge, fulfils commitments and makes it easy for the client to raise concerns. Their recommendations follow the evidence, including where a smaller appointment would serve the client adequately. We assign high scores to credibility, reliability and intimacy, and a low score to self-orientation.

In the low-trust example, imagine an engineer who makes unsupported claims, misses commitments and reacts dismissively to questions. They also push for a substantial appointment before understanding the problem. We assign low scores to the first three components and a high score to self-orientation.

The effect of self-orientation becomes clearer if we hold the other scores constant. An engineer scoring 5 for credibility, reliability and intimacy produces a result of 15 when self-orientation is 1. Increase self-orientation to 5 and the calculation becomes:

(5 + 5 + 5) ÷ 5 = 3

Within the model, the result falls sharply even though the other scores remain strong. This illustrates why apparent self-interest can undermine confidence in an otherwise capable adviser.

The figures are discussion aids, not validated thresholds for high or low trust. A result of 15 does not mean a client trusts you five times as much as a result of 3. The useful question is which behaviours led you to assign those scores and what you could change.

Reviewing your own approach

Choose five activities from how you currently win and deliver work. You might select an introductory letter, a first meeting, a proposal, a progress update and a technical recommendation.

For each, consider what the client actually experiences. What gives them reason to believe you? What demonstrates dependable behaviour? What makes it easier to raise concerns? Where might your own priorities dominate?

Use low, medium and high ratings, scored 1, 3 and 5, if that helps structure the review. Remember the direction: high credibility, reliability and intimacy are desirable; high self-orientation is a concern.

Support each rating with an observable behaviour. Where possible, compare your assessment with client feedback. Your intention to be helpful does not necessarily tell you how an interaction was received.

The same activity can have very different effects depending on its execution. A follow-up call can fulfil an agreement, clarify a concern or put unwanted pressure on a decision.

Choose one behaviour to change this week. Record commitments more carefully, explain the limits of a recommendation or leave more room for questions in meetings.

Make the change specific enough that the client could notice it.

Best wishes - Kevin

Framework source: David H. Maister, Charles H. Green and Robert M. Galford, The Trusted Advisor. See also Trusted Advisor Associates’ explanation of the Trust Equation.