Streamline your architecture or engineering firm's operations with repeatable processes that enhance communication, delegation, and automation, leading to improved services and scalable growth.
Updated December 2024
Projects are complex, which is why simplifying your architecture or engineering firm's internal processes is so important. It lets you and your team focus your creative energy on solving your client's problems. By setting up systems and processes to standardize and handle your day to day administrative tasks, those should run smoothly. It also allows your team to be more effective because they know what needs to get done and how to do it.
This is one of the most important things a firm owner can do. Defining your systems makes your firm more valuable because it makes your team more effective. It increases profitability by getting your people to focus on the right things.
Of course, achieving these business goals will also require a lot of hard work. It's an ongoing process to document and design each system at your firm. But it can reap major rewards.
Defined processes that can easily be replicated allow you to streamline communication, delegate effectively, automate tasks, and scale your business. Only after taking these steps can you truly improve your services, scale your business, and increase profitability and the value of your firm.
If you and your team attack each project differently, you are losing out on the potentially profitable gains of standardization. Although it may appear that every project or every client is unique, that doesn't mean they need a fully custom process. Instead, by defining how you do things, and make that the standard across your business, you can better serve your clients, increase quality of work, reduce errors or mistakes, all while making your employees happier and more productive.
Professional services businesses often struggle to have set processes. In a recent study it was determined that 32.3 percent of architecture and engineering firms lack standardized project management processes. Surprisingly, even management consultancies are lagging in this area, with 34.6 percent of them lacking standardization across their services. Although these numbers may look bad, the good news is that it means there is a huge opportunity to rise above your competition by starting to implement standard systems and processes at your business.
The value of systematizing your firm is immense. Companies that use standardized project delivery procedures for over 80% of their projects can increase their revenue per employee by $19,000 or more, compared to businesses that use these processes 20 percent of the time or less. For a 10 person firm that is an extra $190,000 in revenue which can drastically increase your profit, be distributed as bonuses, increase owner draws, or give you the funds to hire additional staff.
While these statistics speak to project management methods in particular, the importance of defined procedures applies across all aspects of the business, including in areas like time management, billing, client communication, and business analysis. Joe Woodard, the accounting guru and CEO of Woodard Events, holds that standardization is vital to “create a consistency of client delivery systems, reduce the impact of employee turnover, and convert the collective knowledge of employees to firm-managed intellectual capital.”
This standardization paves the way for automation, which is essential for increasing efficiency and effectiveness in this on-demand world. It also sets your business up to be a valuable entity that can remain profitable when the original owners decide to step aside.
Meaning, a firm with standardized systems and process will be worth more in a future merger or acquisition. If you ever plan on selling your firm, whether to an outside buyer, or an internal ownership transition, start developing systems and processes now to maximize your return on investment.
One of the most valuable aspects of documenting your processes is you can then find ways to improve them, delegate them to other people, or even find opportunities to automate repetitive tasks. After your firm has adopted predictable routines for communicating, servicing clients, executing projects, and so on, you can now let automation do the work for you.
The dedicated software platforms that are designed to do exactly this go by several names, including professional services automation (PSA), practice management, project accounting, business management, and more. The specific features of each solution will vary, but they typically help you perfect your invoicing, accounting, time and expense tracking, project management, and reporting. These tools offer convenient automations to take hours off of processes with functionalities like automatic time tracking, smart data entry fields, scheduled reporting, and automated invoicing.
Your peers recognize the significance of this: According to BQE's survey data, 30.1% of professionals say that "automating repetitive tasks" is the most important capability for them when it comes to billing. Meanwhile, 86% of respondents to a Smartsheet survey confirm that automation makes their employees more efficient and productive.
BQE's research has found that simply automating the data flow between project management and invoicing functions saves 10% of an administrative employee's time. That's about 200 hours, or about 5 work weeks a year! With a billing rate of only $100/hour that is valued at about $20,000 of value for the business.
On a wider scale, with PSA software, businesses increase their percentage of on-time and on-budget projects by 12%, and grow staff utilization by 9%. Even more impressively, project margins jump up by 45%, while revenue leakage goes down by 50%. All of this happens while increasing client satisfaction since projects are delivered on time and on budget, and the quality of the deliverables increases.
This is why software solutions like BQE CORE are so important for engineering and architecture firms. Tools like this are designed specifically to help you run better businesses so you and your teams can focus on the high value work of solving your client's problems and impacting the communities in which you work.
If you’re going to efficiently and effectively help your clients, improve the productivity of your team, and increase the profitability of your business, you need standardized processes and software that streamlines them. Capgemini reports that 64% of organizations that have implemented intelligent automation have seen client satisfaction increase by over 60%. In the face of numbers like this, it's clear that an upgrade is well worth it.
Remember, you don't have to tackle this all at once. Pick one area of your firm to start with and document how you do those tasks. See what is work and what can be improved and iterate on those processes until they are in a place you are happy with. Then move on to a new area of the business. It may take a year or even longer, but slowly you will have a Standard Operating Procedures document that will define all the various things you and your team does at your business. This document can then be used to onboard new hires, improve quality of work, and increase your client's satisfaction.
This blog post was just an introduction. To learn more tips and strategies to improve the operations of your architecture or engineering firm, download our Ebook "7 Best Practices To Make Your Architecture Firm Less Chaotic."
By implementing best practices from strategic design thinking to leveraging technology, you can save time and reduce stress while getting back to focusing on the creative work that led you to start your firm in the first place. Download the ebook for free by clicking the image below.
As the Director of Content & Community at BQE, Lucas Gray researches and writes about best practices for Architecture and Engineering firms. He also fosters community across the AEC industries. The content and community interaction focuses on providing business advice derived from his wealth of experience in architectural design, firm operations, and business consulting. Lucas's background includes co-founding Propel Studio Architecture in Portland, Oregon in 2013. He led the firm’s operations, focusing on business development, marketing, team management, financial management, and design direction. Specializing in addressing housing issues, Lucas has designed over 50 Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), various infill housing developments, and custom homes. He has worked internationally in Shanghai, Bangkok, and Berlin, on a wide range of large-scale design projects as well as community engagement processes. After working in the Architecture profession for about 20 years, Lucas transitioned into business consulting for A&E firms as part of CVG. Here he worked with small growing A&E businesses, helping guide them to improved operations and profitability. Passionate about the built environment, urban planning, transit, and public art, Lucas also writes about these topics on his blog and creates abstract art in his spare time.
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