Grow Your Business: The Complete Guide for Architecture, Engineering, and Consulting Firms

Our new guide offers tips and tricks to help small- and medium-sized project-based firms achieve sustainable growth.

According to this year's Deltek Clarity survey, 77% of UK Architecture, engineering, and consulting firms are concerned about being able to cope with sustainable growth. That's not just a statistic, it's a signal that for many small and mid-sized firms, growth is no longer a strategic ambition, but a matter of survival. Scaling up isn't just about winning more work; it's about delivering it profitably, consistently, and with control.

To help firms navigate this complex terrain, we've published The Growth Blueprint—a practical guide to scaling smarter, boosting profitability, and setting meaningful goals.

Read on for a summary on how to win and deliver great projects, control costs, and create targeted KPIs that drive results.

Win More Profitable Work: Focus on Projects That Matter

You'd think that all new business is good business, but it's important to focus on winning the right kinds of projects. Ideally, you want to find work that fits into your overall strategy, whether that's projects that make the most of your expertise in a particular field or multi-site projects that demonstrate your ability to manage complex programs of work.

To truly build momentum with your project pipeline, it pays to:

• Track and analyze business development efforts by calculating your win rate.
• Create a compelling proposal template to streamline RFPs.
• Personalize each proposal to align proof points with each client's specific challenges, goals, and preferred language.
• Centralize business development through a single enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, where possible.

Resource Management: The Hidden Growth Lever

Growth brings opportunity, but it can also introduce new challenges in managing resources to meet the growing demands of project portfolios.

When optimizing your resource management processes, here are some key things to keep in mind:

Visibility

Maintaining visibility into resource availability and utilization is vital. Use dashboards or visual resource management views to track who's booked where, how resources align with project timelines, and identify resource gaps.

Forecasting

Historical project data offers a great way to spot trends and identify areas for improvement in the future. Ensure that you review project progress each week and proactively adjust plans as you identify emerging patterns that suggest future opportunities.

Budget and schedule alignment

The most effective way to mitigate risks is to identify them early. Project management tools are particularly helpful, especially those that offer both resource planning and financial performance dashboards. When you can see how hours are spent compared to initial plans and directly compare budgets and costs, you can make informed adjustments—before projects start running over.

Tasks and assignment updates

Keeping task lists and team assignments up to date is crucial. However, this isn't always easy, especially if you have to get in touch with every team member individually. The right project management tools can streamline team communications, making it easier to adjust tasks, resources, and schedules as project needs change.

Control Costs and Cash Flow as You Scale

Delivering great projects leads to continued growth and success. But the only way to deliver projects consistently over the long term is to ensure sustainable operations and continued cash flow.

That means shoring up back-office operations by ensuring bills and invoices are carefully managed and sent out on time—every time.

While it's possible to achieve this manually, the right financial management systems can ensure operational consistency, minimize admin burden, and:

• Automate routine tasks to reduce errors and free up time
• Accelerate approvals to keep projects and payments moving
• Track real-time financial performance across teams and projects
• Close the month faster with fewer manual reconciliations
• Scale processes without adding complexity or overhead

Measure What Matters - The KPIs That Drive Growth

Setting and monitoring the right metrics is a crucial part of getting the results you want. But which metrics are best for firms focusing on growth?

Start by looking at KPIs such as:

Utilization rate

This KPI measures the percentage of an employee's available time used for productive, billable work. This helps you understand how efficiently you're charging clients and ensures your bills cover costs and overheads.

Project margin

The difference between project revenue and costs. Measuring project margin is vital in assessing project profitability. You can then build financial performance into your wider strategy, allocate resources effectively, prioritize higher-margin projects and set appropriate pricing strategies.

Pipeline stability

By comparing your project pipeline's outlook to your revenue forecast, you can monitor your progress towards revenue targets in any given quarter. From there, it's easier to understand the health of your pipeline and adjust your approach to project bids as needed.

Take the Next Steps to Scalable Growth

With the right projects, resources, and metrics, you can optimize your firm's performance over time, setting you well on your way to consistent growth.

This blog only touched the surface of how you can find new growth in even the most challenging markets. To learn more, make sure you take a look at The Growth Blueprint: Win More Work, Improve Cash Flow, and Deliver Projects Profitably.