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By Srividhya Viswanathan | By prioritizing leadership, trust, and accountability, organizations can build teams that not only achieve their goals but thrive together.

By Mark Zweig | In the AEC business, recruiting isn’t just about finding people; it’s about becoming the kind of firm people want to join.

By Liisa Andreassen | President and co-founder of Peralte-Clark, LLC, a firm that specializes in managing, planning, designing, and implementing public and private infrastructure projects.

By Matt Cooper | These firms often rely on few clients, multitasking staff, and undocumented processes, creating volatility, inefficiency, and growth challenges.

By John McAdams | If you’re serious about growing your design firm, you need to add outside experts to your board of directors.

By Mark Zweig | It is a basic human need to see one’s work go from start to finish, and leaders need to do more to empower their people with this perspective.

By Liisa Andreassen | CEO and president of Drummond Carpenter, a service-disabled veteran-owned small business specializing in civil, environmental engineering, and applied research.

By Katherine Wilczek & Ceclia Martin-Smith | While it can be helpful to use generational trends to inform your management practices, it is most important to get to know your employees as individuals. 

By David Doxtad & Andy Brandel | As your firm grows, this person ensures you will maintain your core competencies, values, and environment with your newly added team members.

By Mark Zweig | Entrepreneurial firms adapt better to a changing environment, are better places to work, and build significant value over time that can be harvested.

By Eduardo Smith | For any COO to be successful in the AEC industry today, they must embrace the soft side of leadership, focusing on the people and culture as much as the numbers.

By Mark Zweig | A lack of willingness to confront these things honestly has caused way too much frustration and unhappiness in the individuals who work in our organizations.

By Mark Zweig | Owning a firm that will be profitable and grow over time requires a longer term view and a willingness to invest in the people who generate the revenue.

By Will Swearingen | How does your firm’s financial performance stack up against the rest of the AEC industry?

By Liisa Andreassen | Principal and chief engineer at Hayduk Engineering, a multidisciplinary consulting engineering firm specializing in civil and wastewater engineering.

By Liisa Andreassen | President and chairman of the board at McFarland Johnson, a national consultancy providing program management, planning, environmental, engineering, and construction phase services.

By Mark Zweig | Whether or not the AEC industry experiences a ‘great resignation,’ there are some things you should do to keep turnover low.

By Mark Zweig | You may be an architect or engineer and think you aren’t really motivated by money. But money is a scorecard in the game of business, and ‘winning’ is fun!

By Mercedez Thompson | Leaders must engage in burnout prevention strategies that alleviate overburdened employees, reduce the number of meetings, encourage PTO, and promote flexible hours.

By Liisa Andreassen | President of raSmith (Brookfield, WI), a multi-disciplinary firm of civil engineers, structural engineers, land surveyors, development managers, landscape architects, and ecologists.

By Liisa Andreassen | President of Prein&Newhof (Grand Rapids, MI), a 100 percent employee-owned firm that is dedicated to thinking ahead, building lasting relationships, and crafting long-term solutions.

By Mark Zweig | If you’re trying to buy or thinking about buying another company in this business, here are a few things that may be helpful to you.

By Christina Zweig Niehues | New data on recruitment and retention shows how firms of different sizes, types, and geographies were impacted by the events of 2020.

President and CEO of Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. (Northbrook, IL), a global firm that’s committed to helping clients solve, repair, and avoid problems in the built world.

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

Co-founder and principal at CWE (Fullerton, CA), a  civil engineering, water resources, and environmental engineering firm whose experts pledge to create a better tomorrow, today.

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

President of Shield Environmental Associates (Lexington, KY), a full-service engineering and environmental consulting firm that seeks solutions of distinct value.

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

Implement these tips to decrease tension and drastically increase the utility of your feedback.

“Top management is largely responsible for HR’s ineffectiveness on many levels in the typical A/E firm.”

President and CEO of Falcon Engineering, a woman-owned engineering firm in Cary, North Carolina.

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...

CEO and founder of Partner Engineering and Science, Inc. (Hot Firm #9 for 2018), a 700-plus person engineering and environmental due diligence consulting firm. By Liisa Andreassen Correspondent “There’s no boundary between entry-level and senior-level...

Honoring your clients’ business success above all else will enhance your firm’s reputation and bottom line – without compromising design. This is the third installment of a three-part discussion on the topic of job success,...

Leaders of employee-friendly firms talk about how being a Best Firm affects marketing, recruiting, and team building. The Zweig Letter: How has being a Best Firm To Work For helped you recruit and retain top...

President of Environmental Partners Group, Inc. (Hot Firm #22 for 2017), a 55-person firm based in Quincy, Massachusetts. By Liisa Andreassen Correspondent “Their problems need to be your problems,” says Gabriel, referring to the client-firm...

Casual leader of engineering firm is doing what he wants to do, surrounding himself with smart people, and getting the job done. By Liisa Andreassen Correspondent After 20 years of working for someone else, David...

McMahon Associates celebrates its accomplishments as it moves into a new era with continued focus on staff, shareholders, and clients. By Liisa Andreassen Correspondent Exciting things are happening this year at McMahon Associates, Inc. (#21...

Independent environmental firms are increasingly rare, but out on the East Coast, CEO Eileen Pannetier has succeeded by sticking to her small-firm roots. By Liisa Andreassen Correspondent Prior to founding Comprehensive Environmental Inc. (Best Firm...

Zweig Group’s 2016 Financial Performance Survey of Architecture, Engineering, Planning and Environmental Consulting Firms, released on August 19, 2016, is a comprehensive study of industry firms with nearly 100 financial ratios, indicators, and statistics. The...

Are you getting all you need from HR today? Three suggestions from Mark Zweig. Human resources management often gets a bad rap. That isn’t without cause. In my experience, too many HR managers forget whose...

No movie was better than “Wall Street” at capturing the spirit of the go-go 80s. Michael Douglas played the role of Gordon Gekko, a charismatic “rock star” investment banker who gave a speech on the...

Human resources management has long been criticized and undervalued by top management in A/E/P and environmental firms. Evidence of this fact is pay. According to ZweigWhite’s 2007-2008 Management Compensation Survey of Architecture, Engineering, Planning &...

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...

On the one hand, it would be easy to get negative and discouraged about the current business climate. The war efforts are dragging on with no clear end in sight. The Middle East, in general,...

I’ve written before in The Zweig Letter about the need for passion. Anyone who is going to be truly successful in an A/E or environmental firm has to have it. You have to LOVE what...

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....

Everyone says they’re interested in it, and there are all kinds of articles out there on the subject. How to attract and keep an outstanding workforce is clearly on the minds of many principals and...

I’m bullish on this business. As a group of firms, we are doing better than ever. Revenue is up. Profits are up. And the projects are gratifying. It’s an ethical business. There are a lot...

It seems to me that a lot of people in leadership roles in A/E/P and environmental consulting firms are just waiting around. Whether the discussion around the table is related to dealing with a non-performer,...

We’ve talked about it for decades, but the labor shortage in the A/E/P and environmental industries is finally here. Our clients are telling us that it’s hard to hire just about anyone. Every job takes...

He’s a really nice person, a “people person.” He’s someone who deeply cares about other people. He’s a really good listener. He’s someone the employees will confide in. Does this sound like the ideal human...

With the tight market labor, Gen-X employee turnover, inefficiency from internal competition, and record backlogs of project work to be completed, it may be time to take a hard look at your compensation policies and...

If you consider the truly successful people you know who own and manage A/E/P or environmental firms, I think you’ll find that they think differently from everybody else. They are irreverent. They defy logic. They...

I think I know something about what it takes to make a firm grow. Three times in the last few weeks, I’ve conducted our new, 1½-day seminar, “Managing a Growing Firm.” I attended the “Inc....

The longer I am involved with this industry the more aware I am of how critical the collective and individual morale of a firm’s employees is to its continued ability to function successfully. Let’s face...

Although I sometimes wish I were more clever or entertaining than I am, writing about what makes A/E/P or environmental firms more successful is what you pay me to do. Occasionally I think I sound...

We’ve all experienced the joy of doing business with a company that acts as if their people like serving you. It really is a great feeling. Most of the time, it happens with businesses like...

I visited one of my favorite client companies the other day. It’s a mid- to large-sized consulting engineering firm that has been around a while. The principals are entrepreneurial. The staff is pretty good, too,...

Let me tell you a little story about two managers. Both head divisions for the same large, international engineering and environmental company. By most any standard, one of the two, who we’ll call “Jed,” is...

Although I’ve been trying to preach the gospel for years now, most principals of A/E/P and environmental consulting firms still do not understand what human resources management is all about. First, there’s the way so...