With competition tougher and margins smaller for professional services firms, we need to have every advantage to ensure our projects are profitable. Many things erode the margins on our projects including bad estimates, scope creep, poor resource management and issues...
Is your business development (BD) program successful? Whether you answered yes or no, here’s a question to ponder: how do you know? Two challenges facing professional services firms today are both having an understanding of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as well as...
Your project managers (PMs) face daily challenges to their success that they are unprepared for. Becoming a PM can feel like moving to a foreign country – everything feels strange and everyone is speaking a different language. PMs today have more demands on their...
We fixate on go/no go in this industry. As we should. Go/no go is the pivotal decision point in A/E/C consulting firms’ business where we consider ‘spending or not spending’ our precious overhead dollars to pursue work. It is an important marketing and...
The AEC Profitability Summit is an event developed specifically to help architecture and engineering firm leaders increase profits by focusing on implementing business management best practices. 2019 was our third Profitability Summit and this year we returned to...
One of the most frustrating aspects of running a business is getting employees to follow your business processes. Whether it is submitting timesheets late, making mistakes on proposals, failing to respond to clients correctly or failing to get approvals for extra...
Reston, VA – The Find the Lost Dollars™ Client Awards were designed to recognize our clients who have realized the greatest financial impact, culture change and individual performance improvement as a result of completing the Find the Lost Dollars™...
“According to a McKinsey report, employees spend 1.8 hours every day—9.3 hours per week, on average—searching and gathering information.” Source: http://utrconf.com/top-3-reasons-why-we-spend-so-much-time-searching-for-information/ One of your employees,...
Is your executive team on the same page about where your firm is heading? One of the most critical factors to successful A&E business results is being able to make the right decisions that will drive the firm’s growth and profitability. When there is a lack of...
You want higher profits and happier employees but getting both may seem impossible. The relationship between firm financial success and employee happiness is not always obvious, but higher profits enable investment in staff and systems that in turn, makes them enjoy...
Scope creep – that vicious blood-sucker that steals your project profits. When the scope of the work done exceeds what is promised in your contract, and you don’t get more money, you pay for it. It comes straight from your profit margins and can leave a project at a...
In 2014 Hillmann Consulting, a then 100-person environmental consulting firm based in Union, NJ, found itself on the cusp of growth. They started seeing what many A&E firms experience when transitioning from a small local firm to a mid-size geographically...
We waited ten years for business to be booming again, and now that it is, most of our problems have gone away, right? In reality, we just have different problems, and for some firms, more problems. That is because as we grow and add more people, offices, services,...
The majority of A&E firms will concur that 2017 and 2018 have been stellar years for the industry. Opportunities have been abundant, and economists are telling us that it is likely that the momentum will continue into next year. With this high volume...
“While I have always been concerned for the client, the company, project performance and profits, as an engineer my focus has always been on the technical aspect of the work. This focus on quality and technical excellence will never change. What has changed, however,...
The number one challenge stated by our clients right now is hiring and retaining employees. Because finding experienced employees is so difficult in the A&E industry, many firms are getting creative with their compensation plans, benefits, profit-sharing and other...
The Architecture, Engineering and Environmental industry is as hot as it has ever been in my 30-year tenure, yet even when work is booming, I still find even the best A&E firms struggle to meet targets in any given month, quarter or year. So many factors impact...
The Architecture and Engineering industry is busier right now than it has been in a long time. This is great for your firm – right? I talk with at least 5 to 10 A&E firm CEOs a week, and their results are surprisingly mixed. While it is obviously a booming market...
Many A&E firms come to me because their profits are too low, not hitting expected targets, and barely enabling the firm to grow. In most cases, their projects are making a profit – just not at the levels expected or needed. The leaders of these firms are...
The employee utilization rate is one of a handful of key performance indicators (KPIs) used by A&E firms to measure the ability of the firm to keep employees working on billable projects.Your employees are your firm’s primary asset and...
The AEC Profitability Summit is an event developed specifically to help architecture and engineering firm leaders increase profits by focusing on implementing business management best practices. The 2018 Summit, held at the beautiful Eden Roc resort in Miami...
PRESS RELEASE Reston, VA – The Find the Lost Dollars™ Client Awards were designed to recognize our clients who have realized the greatest financial impact, culture change and individual performance improvement as a result of completing the Find the Lost Dollars™...
When we close our eyes and dream of the ideal business and team of employees, we imagine a world where there are no conflicts, everyone is a top performer, and we never have to give negative feedback. Not all employees are created equal But the reality is that not all...
Reston, VA – The Find the Lost Dollars™ Client Awards were designed to recognize our clients who have realized the greatest financial impact, culture change and individual performance improvement as a result of completing the Find the Lost Dollars™ Training Program....
Are you frustrated because not every team in your firm is hitting their goals or performing at their highest level? Unfortunately you may have groups that struggle to be profitable, have high turnover, or don’t embrace your firm’s culture. It can be difficult to hold...
