It has been 50+ years since Feigenbaum first conceived of the strategy for the manufacturing sector, yet quality costing strategies have not found a foothold among engineering firms. This study was aimed at constructing a theory that explains possible barriers to acceptance of the Feigenbaum strategy by analyzing the attitudes and opinions of players in an actual engineering firm. Modeled after the Feigenbaum approach and tailored to the business model of engineering and architectural firms, a system was developed to classify and record costs of quality. A local office of a large engineering firm was recruited to apply the system on a hand-picked design project. Using an inductive approach and a grounded theory methodology, records were examined and participants were interviewed. The observed concepts and emergent hypotheses begin to tell an interesting story that might be the key to the ultimate success or failure of the Feigenbaum approach to quality costing in engineering firms.