Architects, engineers, planners, and allied professionals by and large have a really hard time defining exactly who they want to sell their services to. The unfortunate truth is that most will sell their services to...
After 28 years of working in and around A/E/P and environmental firms, it is clear that there are many good firms and only a few truly great firms in this business. The “truly great” firms...
The balance sheet in an A/E or environmental firm is supposed to show what you have and what you owe. The difference between the two is the “net worth” of the company. It all sounds...
Turnover is costly. All of the human resources experts can tell you that— some could even give you the real cost of turnover for any specific position to the penny if you wanted it! Staff...
With this week’s special focus on information technology, I thought I would take the time to sound off on a number of different technology-related topics. BlackBerries: I still think they are the greatest. I am...
We all seem to spend a lot of money on training. That’s a loosely applied term. Many things fall into the “training pot” in a typical A/E/P or environmental firm. My anecdotal understanding is that...
You take a look at any really successful person— whether they are in the A/E/P or environmental business or some other business— and I will show you someone who knows how to build good personal...
Brenda Potwater was quite proud of herself. She was going to be a principal in Hitesh, Springwald, and Fruttison, the oldest old-line planning and design firm in the San Francisco Bay area. She was already...
Now that we are fully working ourselves into a recession frenzy (whether we needed one or not), many A/E firms will be facing some tough choices IF they want to remain as profitable as they...
After 28 years of working with architects and engineers who are either sole or part owners in their firms, I can honestly say that these folks are deficient in their knowledge of rudimentary finance and...
A friend of mine who redoes old houses here in town was telling me the other day about an architect he’s been working with lately. She’s a registered architect, has her own company, and is...
I was at Lowe’s the other day buying a Jacuzzi tub for a 1925 bungalow we are redoing from top to bottom to resell. While the plumbing guy ran off to get my tub, I...
There’s no question in my mind that using personal letters is one of the best-kept marketing secrets for architects, engineers, and environmental consultants. Newsletters are overused. Every firm has one. And if the firm is...
When it comes to A/E/P and environmental consulting firms, the difference in profitability and growth vs. marginal performance and no growth is very little. But that “little” difference may just be how your people feel...
I have worked in this business nearly three decades (how can I be that old??). And I can tell you with certainty that our managers have a real tendency to be overly optimistic. I have...
I was in a board meeting recently with a quality, old-line engineering/architecture/consulting firm where one of the primary topics was business development. We spent several hours talking about it and how they are changing their...
This week’s special issue focuses on sustainability and green building. The guts of these ideas are not mere buzzwords, as the earth’s growing population and declining state of natural resources ensures we’ll all be dragged...
One decision I made recently in my redevelopment business was to start running it more like a “real” business. This may seem strange coming from me— we always tried very hard to practice what we...
If you look at why most A/E firms just sort of muddle along, and yet a few are growing by leaps and bounds, you’ll find the “secret ingredient” in the growing firms’ recipe is often...
I can admit it. I’m a little “bah, humbug” about the upcoming holidays. I sure don’t need or want anything for myself I don’t already have. All of us in the Zweig family have so...
I am getting really tired of principals (and, in some cases, finance and accounting people) telling me that there’s no way they can do better than a 96-day, 105-day, or 119-day average collection period (ACP)...
For my kickoff presentation at our eighth annual The Zweig Letter Hot Firm Conference and Awards Celebration in Boston last month, I decided to talk about the differences in entrepreneurial A/E/P firms from those that...
Lawrence Tunican was really starting to wonder what was wrong. Was the company he started nearly 30 years ago— Tunican Engineering— that uncool of a place to work? He could not hire young people any...
Like it or not, most firms in this business of any size have to borrow money. Whether the firm needs the money to provide operating capital while waiting to collect accounts receivable, to finance business...
