Factor Blog for Architecture & Engineering Firms

Most architecture and engineering (A/E) firm strategic plans address activities for the next 3-5 years. Trying to tie a budget to such long-range goals is challenging, yet it’s important to have some metrics to give your plan substance. But if you’re doing quarterly budgets, as we often suggest, how do you tie these two things together?

Beyond Forecasting: The Beauty of a Quarterly Rolling BudgetJanaury 18, 2021As architecture and engineering (A/E) firms get up to speed in the new year, one of management’s top priorities is creating a budget. Of course, that’ll be especially important and challenging after a year that was anything but normal and therefore can’t really be used…

As an architecture or engineering (A/E) firm owner, you work hard to grow the value of your company and deserve to benefit from that work whenever you’re ready. The intense stressors of 2020 have led many principals to feel that the time is now… or at least, soon. But it’s important to take the proper preparation steps to ensure you get maximum value for your firm.

In our work with successful A/E firms, we’ve found that following these 10 rules are critical for effective accounting and financial management.

While developing and sticking to a budget is a common practice for business in many industries, that isn’t necessarily the case with architecture and engineering (A/E) firms. Yes, it’s true that sticking to a budget in the face of unexpected events can be hard. But that doesn’t mean that budgeting is a waste of time. Quite the opposite, actually.

One of the best uses of downtime is providing training for project managers (PMs). In fact, as baby boomers continue to retire in ever-greater numbers, the loss of project management expertise is having a bigger and more negative impact on A/E firms with each passing year.

In this post, we address the final piece to the negotiation puzzle: seeing things from the client’s perspective. And this is definitely a case of “last, but not least.” While negotiation is, by its nature, a very “us-focused” activity, putting yourself in the client’s shoes is essential to success.

Completing negotiations in a way that both your firm and the client are happy with the outcome requires that you prepare properly and fully for your discussions. But what, exactly, does “proper” preparation look like? We’ll begin to address that in this post.

An area of architecture and engineering (A/E) firm contract negotiations that can be especially challenging for those unfamiliar with it is government negotiations. If your firm is pursuing government work, there are some potential pitfalls you really need to be aware of.

Group negotiations that include key stakeholders from each firm are crucial, as the collective insights of the participants are needed in order to be ready to engage with the client.