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By Daryl Simons Jr. | As employees rethink the role of work in their lives, AEC firms must reconsider what long-term performance really requires.

By Chad Coldiron | The AEC industry is facing uncertainty, but leaders remain optimistic, practical, and focused on adapting to what comes next.

By Sara Grayum | AI is accelerating fast, but in AEC the real opportunity lies in using it to expand capacity, not replace people.

By Julia Moroney | The real AI conversation in AEC isn’t about tools or speed, it’s about preserving trust, judgment, and accountability.

The leading source of business management insights, research, and strategies tailored specifically for leaders of AEC firms.

The leading source of business management insights, research, and strategies tailored specifically for leaders of AEC firms.

By John McGill | AI may speed up rendering and iteration in AEC, but human judgment still determines accuracy, compliance, and meaningful design innovation.

By Barbara Stiles & Jennifer Knox | AEC clients judge project managers not only on technical delivery, but on leadership under pressure and clarity amid complexity.

By Julia Moroney | AEC firms must protect flexibility without sacrificing mentorship and visibility for young leaders.

By Mark Zweig | Succession fails when managers cling to control instead of building leaders behind them.

By Mark Zweig | Firms that ignore AI will look slower, more expensive, and harder to work with.

By GinaRenee Autrey | AEC marketing doesn’t fail from lack of expertise – it fails when firms keep telling safe stories in increasingly noisy markets.

By Kubilay Şahinler | While attention gravitates toward AI in design, the strongest business value often emerges elsewhere.

By Mark Zweig | Better project management isn’t about new systems, it’s about disciplined leadership, clear decisions, and relentless execution of fundamentals.

By Kraig Kern | AEC's next competitive advantage isn't expertise; it's how fast you unlock it.

By Kyle Ahern | Outdated pay benchmarks are quietly undermining retention and credibility in today’s AEC compensation decisions.

By Mark Zweig | For AEC firm owners and top managers who say they care about value but keep acting like they don’t.

  AI in recruitingBy Daryl Simons Jr.Technology can enhance recruiting efficiency, but human connection, trust, and judgment will always define successful hiring. Choosing the right integration strategyBy Michael DiOrioModern AEC firms win by connecting specialized...

By Daryl Simons Jr. | Technology can enhance recruiting efficiency, but human connection, trust, and judgment will always define successful hiring.

By Tom Godin | When the mind and body of a business move together, worry fades and real performance begins.

By Daryl Simons Jr. | Rethinking first impressions creates fairer decisions, stronger relationships, and lasting benefits for candidates and firms.

By Thomas Mitchell | AI is transforming dispute resolution by predicting outcomes, reducing conflicts, and enhancing decision-making – while raising vital data privacy concerns.

By Erik Stroemberg | Practical insights and recommendations for creating, communicating, and maintaining an effective AI policy.

By Dave Williams | Policy slack combines structure with flexibility, empowering leaders with the room to move, own decisions, and grow.

By Nick Heim | Innovation in AEC succeeds when people, processes, and technology work together with purpose and alignment.

By Daryl Simons Jr. | How to create a stronger, more dynamic, and future-ready workplace – where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

By Mark Zweig | Embracing curiosity, open-mindedness, and positive thinking leads to personal growth, stronger connections, and greater success in life and business.

By Elizabeth Preston | Managers can unintentionally hinder their team’s writing by not providing clear standards, dedicated time, and constructive feedback.

By Tom Godin | How the military’s mission command principles can improve leadership and management in AEC firms.

By Safa Kamangar | By applying these principles, a manager can become a source of inspiration, guidance, and stability for their team members.

By Lauren Martin | There has never been a downside to reporting circumstances to your professional liability insurance carrier, but there can be a huge downside for failing to report them.

By Mark Zweig | Those who read your emails, letters, reports, social media posts, and resumes are all deciding how intelligent you are in large part from your writing.

By Liisa Andreassen | President of Davis & Floyd, a firm with more than six decades of experience solving complex engineering, planning, and landscape architecture challenges.

By Janki DePalma | When you notice feelings of resentment, take a moment to explore what that warning sign is trying to tell you before it escalates into something more.

By Leisbel Lam | We need to strive for a leadership style that is centered on emotional intelligence and finding common ground, connection, and growth within our teams.

By Tom Godin | An org chart can be an invaluable tool for your business because it provides clarity and communicate roles.

By Eric Wilson | With the right set of values and organizational alignment, you may find yourself in a positive feedback loop where shared principles guide you toward collective goals.

By Mark Zweig | People who exhibit these qualities are likely to be well-thought of by their people and, more importantly, are able to achieve goals that others deemed impossible.

By Mitch Fortner | To be effective over the long-term for an organization, our personal ambition must be grounded in mutual respect, collaborative teamwork, and integrity.

By Mark Zweig | We’ve all heard about the attributes of highly effective people, but what about the habits of highly ineffective people?

By Rob Hughes | Many design firms that adjusted their workplace to address COVID-19 face heightened exposures to employment-related litigation and related negative consequences.

By Justin Smith | Training opportunities that use the best of both worlds – science and experience – will bring your firm to the next level.

By Julie Benezet | Mentors do not fight for candidates’ advancement opportunities. That is the job of champions.

Contract disclaimers reflect the reality that estimating is an art, not a science – and that design professionals cannot guarantee or warrant the actual costs of construction.

Educating yourself about these biases as well as potential strategies for mitigation can help you avoid prejudice in your decision-making.

Founding principal of PK Electrical (Reno, NV), a women-owned, small business electrical engineering and design firm founded in 1996.

Firms should evaluate their services, internal IT systems and controls, and check their insurance to make sure they have the protection they need.

Successful leaders have to be able to deliver tough messages. Use these six strategies to navigate difficult conversations.

Trust your judgement, speak up, and keep learning. Your efforts will pay dividends down the road.

Unless you put yourself out there as perfect, courts will typically hold you to the standard of reasonable care if you make a mistake.

Our success, as people and as businesses, depends on the quality and speed of our response to problems and opportunities. This play on the word responsibility is not new, but it has never been more...

They are everywhere, but they don’t have to win. Identify their behavior and rectify it, or risk losing your staff. Regrettably, we have all been there, regardless of the profession. Whether it’s real estate, marketing,...

Zweig Group offers plenty of opportunities for education and training, but among the crown jewels are The Principals Academy and CEO Roundtable. If you work in the AEC industry, it almost goes without saying that...

One of the most frustrating aspects of being a business owner is when two or more employees – or worse – two or more work groups – both productive ones – don’t get along. One...

What we're up to Zweig Group has launched a customized and niche Online Continuing Education portal for technical and design professionals, accessible at www.ZweigGroup.com/Zlearning. Zlearning offers a variety of one-hour training options to help the...

We all like and need profits, but there’s more to doing business than the bottom line, and the A/E industry should take heed. I’ve previously written about a group I’ve become active with here in...

Under threat, firms solve problems when leaders commit to the right roles and the right people to inform, inquire, and act. You’ve all been there. A room full of eight, 18, or even 80 anxious...

Success in recruiting is relational, not transactional, so keep those contacts warm and be prepared to wait for that all-star to join your team. Last year I had the privilege of watching the courting of...

They count, and they need to be made across numerous fronts if you want to get your foot in the door with a new client. As the saying goes, first impressions count. Although much of...

We often talk about compatibility in the context of marriages. Oftentimes, when there’s incompatibility, one spouse tried to change the other. We all know how well that works out! It rarely does. If people aren’t...

Campaign finance laws, bid rigging, price fixing, and bribery. We hear about this with contractors, but how about design professionals? Several times each year, there is an article about some contractor being debarred or convicted...

Sometimes you have to fire an employee, but in plenty of cases, a mistake is a mistake, and an employee with a second chance is loyal. It’s a position that no boss wants to be...

As the bumper sticker says, "Shit Happens." Unfortunately, it rarely occurs at the ideal time. Problems crop up that you didn't anticipate – health problems, a parent dies, a key employee quits, divorce, IRS audits...

Change is a powerful force, so embrace it, learn from it, and by all means, take account of its effects and be reasonable in dealing with it. Life would be more comfortable if clichés helped....

A few weeks ago, I wrote a short article about how important it is for firm owners to understand the value of their business. The point of the piece was to address the real threat...

Though harder to apply and evaluate, assessments of interpersonal skills can promote team performance and increase morale. I have had a number of discussions lately about how to measure performance. The people I’ve spoken with,...

Have a conversation about project details and fees so you can staff them right and finish work on time, preferably below the allocated fee. On the architecture and engineering professions, we measure everything by time....

Your job is to instill harmony between those who thrive on change and those who prefer the status quo. After working with A/E firms for about 35 years, I have come to the conclusion that...

Take the time to share with new hires your wisdom about why things are the way they are and how they got that way. What happens when someone joins your firm? Do you merely sit...

Having it is one thing; using it is another. Over the years we’ve received several inquiries for off the shelf QA/QC (quality assurance and quality control) plans and manuals – typically prompted by requirements in...

By Ed Friedrichs Chairman, ZweigWhite As architects and engineers, we’re in a long-cycle business. That means we work on long duration assignments, often with extended start/stop cycles— waiting for a public hearing, an EIR to...

Press Release: June 29, 2011 FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (June 29, 2011) – With the economic challenges that architecture, engineering, planning & environmental consulting firms have faced in recent years, effective project management skills remain a crucial...

This week’s focus is all about the new industry buzz term, “IPD.” For those who don’t know, IPD stands for “integrated project delivery.” You might wonder what that means (as I did the first time...

There’s a popular book out right now in the education field entitled The Global Achievement Gap written by a fellow named Tony Wagner, the co-director of the Change Leadership Group at Harvard University. I picked...

It seems like yesterday that I was “the young guy.” And that’s the last thing I wanted to be. I always tried hard to look and seem older than I really was so people would...

I just got back from ZweigWhite’s 2007 A/E Marketing Now Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was our biggest and best-attended marketing conference ever! My task was to open the show with a short talk...

Yesterday was one of those perfect days. It was so nice that I almost felt guilty about it. I really should have been at my office getting ready for the next semester or working on...

Now that A/E/P and environmental consulting firms have been doing business plans regularly for the past 10 or 15 years, it may be time to beef them up a bit. The old platitudes, goals, and...

In the nineties, executive coaching became a popular management fad, particularly outside of the A/E/P and environmental industry. So while budget cutbacks in Fortune 500 and high-tech companies have eliminated a lot of these expenditures,...

Here are 10 things about the A/E/P and environmental consulting business that they don’t teach you in college. The best clients get crapped on. I hate to say it, but sometimes we treat our best...

No doubt about it, all of us who are managers in an A/E/P or environmental firm have to face some tough situations from time to time. They aren’t usually “fun” decisions, or situations that give...

There is a lot of merger and acquisition activity today. It seems like just about everybody is looking to buy or merge with someone else. We’ve never seen a higher level of interest in acquisitions....