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By Mark Zweig | Strong leaders address underperformance directly, clearly, and quickly before it damages culture, client relationships, and team morale.

By Mark Zweig | Long-term firm owners stay motivated by evolving the business, mentoring emerging leaders, and staying close to the action.

Zweig Group consultants and leaders regularly speak, teach, and participate in major industry events across the AEC community.

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

By Mark Zweig | Stop measuring success by utilization – revenue factor reveals what really drives profit in architecture and engineering firms.

This comprehensive resource provides detailed insight into the financial practices, challenges, and performance metrics of firms across the AEC industry, offering financial leaders an invaluable tool for assessing operations and planning for the future.

By Mark Zweig | These misleading statements often stem from naivety and perpetuate harmful conventional wisdom.

By Mark Zweig | 2025 offers opportunities for AEC firms to thrive through responsiveness, strategic metrics, strong banking ties, and workplace honesty.

By Travis White | The rise of nearshoring can reduce costs, address talent shortages, and enhance growth opportunities for AEC firms.

By Mark Zweig | Entrepreneurship is all about seeing and doing things differently from everyone else, so maybe you should be more questioning of the status quo.

By Will Swearingen, Kevin Johns & Alexis Martin | Finding extra deductions or credits will serve you now and when the time comes to transfer ownership.

By Mark Zweig | Open-book management is about sharing financial performance data with employees to foster trust, educate, and improve the firm’s overall performance.

By Mark Zweig | When used consistently, this strategy will allow you to grow faster, raise fees, shed bad clients, and ramp up your pipeline of job candidates.

By Mark Zweig | Only a small number of people really get the idea that building a business is not a sprint – it’s an endurance race. It is all about who can last the...

By Mark Zweig | Not only do you need to monitor and report on the right performance metrics for your firm, but you also have to explain what these numbers mean to your people.

By Mark Zweig | Stop lamenting the labor shortage and start doing what you should to find and keep the very best people in spite of it.

By Eduardo Smith | Strategic thinking enables us to enlarge the value and impact of our work, connecting it much more than a technical solution.

By Mark Zweig | Best practices may be safe, but they won’t differentiate your firm. Make these changes and your firm will stand out.

By Mark Zweig | Many owners fail to understand how much value they can create in their companies if they make the right decisions.

By Eduardo Smith | Company culture, employee engagement, and morale are often the differentiators between common and great companies.

President and CEO of Ramey Kemp & Assoc. (Raleigh, NC), a transportation engineering, planning, and design firm founded in 1992.

Former president of CobbFendley (Houston, TX), a 530-person firm that is committed to providing innovative engineering solutions with the goal of bettering communities.

President of JBCI, a small, but venerable, repair and restoration firm based in Philadelphia.

Survey data from Zweig Group’s 2019 Financial Performance Survey of AEC Firms indicates strong financial performance industry-wide.

Recent data indicates strong financial performance industry-wide Zweig Group’s annual Financial Performance Survey of AEC Firms, released on April 4, 2019, identified a strong positive trend in multiple key financial indicators, including profit, revenue, staff...

Attention to performance metrics can enhance business value, so you might try using a few new financial ratios in your spreadsheets. For those of you involved with firm financial management, you expect to regularly review...

When it comes to our projects, we need to know as much as we can to ensure we stay on track for our firm and our clients. There’s a fine line between what we know...

Getting the information you need on how to run your business in a timely manner is an absolute requirement for survival and success in the A/E business today. As business owners this has to be...

After 37 years of working in one industry, you eventually become aware of just about every bit of what passes for “conventional wisdom” in this business. Some of it may seem logical on the surface...

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (April 14, 2017) –Zweig Group recently released the 2017 Financial Performance Survey of Architecture, Engineering, Planning and Environmental Consulting Firms. This annual publication is based on a survey of industry firms, and is...

Zweig Group’s 2016 Financial Performance Survey of Architecture, Engineering, and Environmental Consulting Firms, gives firm leaders a clear view into industry trends and financial metrics that can help firms effectively manage their resources. The best...

By Mark Zweig | Many folks working in firms in the A/E/P and environmental consulting industry don't understand commonly-used financial terminology. How can you blame them? If no one ever explained it to them you...

Sometimes, firms get lost in utilization and project profitability, and end up solving the wrong problem. People respond to what you track and report. The accounting really does matter. For example, we've helped companies dismantle...

Implementing these 8 easy changes can help your firm work smarter, not harder, and reap the monetary rewards. I have always felt that, if A/E and environmental consulting firms spent as much time on getting...

In 2013, use the lessons learned in 2012 to have a better year – propelled by a slight breeze. Like many readers of The Zweig Letter, I’ve been working to refine the ZweigWhite business plan...

This article first appeared in The Zweig Letter (ISSN 1068-1310) Issue # 990 Originally published 1/14/2013 (Doing the same thing but expecting a different result.) I just got asked why I came back to ZweigWhite...

By Ed Friedrichs Chairman, ZweigWhite When I was CEO of Gensler I was often asked how I kept track of it all. At the end of my tenure, we had 2,400 people in 25 offices...

By Mark Zweig CEO, ZweigWhite We’ve had a rough three years. And although there have been some bright spots and encouraging moments, it could get a whole lot worse. I read one gloom and doom...

By Tracey Jeffers Principal, Valuation Consulting ZweigWhite If you are involved with financial management at some level in your firm, you expect to regularly review the typical balance sheet and income statement. A smaller percentage...

By Mark C. Zweig I thought it might be fun to reflect back on my 30-plus years of working in this business and assemble a list of fundamental laws none of us can get around....

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...

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...

By Mark Zweig | If you really want to raise your effective labor multiplier, here are some things to try.

My six month-old daughter Olive has already said her first word. It is “clock.” She says it practically every time we show her the black reproduction “Kit-Cat” clock on the wall in her bedroom. For...

Business planning does not have to be difficult. Every single firm needs a plan, whether you are a five-person architectural firm started two years ago, or a 3,000-employee, 35-year-old engineering and environmental consulting company. But...

The longer I’ve worked with A/E/P and environmental firms, the more clear it has become to me: Most firms are working on the wrong side of the equation when it comes to boosting effective multipliers...

I know structural engineers who make over $1 million a year. I know landscape architects in larger firms who achieve a 4.22 raw labor multiplier on all the work they do. I know architects who...

You know what? Turnover is not always so bad. Sometimes people just don’t keep up with the firm. There are all kinds of reasons for it. Maybe they got tired. Maybe they got turned off....

As you get your A/E/P or environmental firm ready for 2003, you may be patting yourselves on the back. The fact is that while overall, 2002 was not as good as 2001, a lot of...

The utilization data of A/E/P and environmental firms over the last several years pretty much proves that if you keep everyone overloaded you can’t help but be profitable. That’s easily accomplished in a heated market...

John Dilbertson left the Dilbertson & Terry board meeting shaking his head. How many times did they have to reconsider the issue of principal compensation, particularly base pay? It seemed like it never ended. One...

Let’s all hope it never happens. But as anyone with a few gray hairs can tell you, another recession can, and probably will, occur. So what are you going to do about it? Here are...

At one of my “Managing a Growing Firm” seminars a few weeks ago, I had an attendee tell me how another attendee was handling his ownership transition program. When I asked him who was offering...

A common theme is emerging in our business right now, especially with large firms— but certainly not limited to them. Firms need to improve their profits. Volume is up, optimism is up, backlog is growing,...

Call me any names you want. It won’t be the first time. But it doesn’t matter. I’m tough. I can take it. I have the power of my own convictions and conscience to get me...

To a lot of people in the A/E/P and environmental business, small projects are still something to be avoided. In fact, many business plans we read contain some sort of strategy statement that say the...

The A/E/P and environmental consulting business is really pretty simple from a financial management standpoint. It shouldn’t be hard to track the numbers you need to run a firm, yet so many companies seem to...

Sometimes I think the owners and managers of A/E and environmental firms need a strong dose of realism. We seem to want to bury our heads in the sand to avoid the obvious, or wish...

Every A/E/P and environmental firm I’ve encountered that has survived over the long haul has periodically made a push to improve its profitability. All the growth in the world won’t do you any good if...

It is widely accepted that any well-managed A/E/P or environmental consulting firm should monitor and report on the profitability of the projects it undertakes. Pick up practically any management newsletter, or look in the practice...

Now is the time of year that many A/E/P and environmental firms are taking a look at what’s to come and what needs to be done in the year ahead. Budgets are being set, goals...

Conventional wisdom (CW) isn’t always so “wise.” Let’s take a look at some of the wisdom frequently heard in the halls and conference rooms of A/E and environmental consulting firms: The company will be profitable...

We constantly get asked by principals in A/E and environmental consulting firms about what or where the next “hot markets” will be. It seems that these people have read about market life cycles in the...

This is the time of year many firms do their budgeting. Unfortunately, many of them make the budgeting process far more difficult than it has to be. Small firms may not know where to start...