Search results

By Jigar Desai | As AI raises the appearance of capability, AEC leaders must get better at identifying real competence.

By Duncan Robertson | Strong organization starts with a simple system that keeps growing workloads from turning into missed deadlines and unnecessary stress.

By Mark Zweig | Strong onboarding helps new AEC hires feel valued, useful, and confident they made the right decision.

By Kraig Kern | An observation on modern communication, efficiency, and the messages that quietly disappear.

By Mark Zweig | The fastest way to suffocate a productive AEC firm isn’t bad projects or markets, it’s too many pointless meetings.

Zweig Group is excited to join the 2025 ACEC Fall Conference as a Patron Sponsor, bringing leading-edge insights, research, and practical strategies directly to the engineering community. Held October 5-8 at the Marriott Marquis San Diego...

By Dan Schwartz | Successful M&A communication is achieved through strategy, storytelling, and staying human in the face of complexity.

By Alan Lloyd | In a fast-paced AEC world, servant leadership empowers teams, boosts outcomes, and shapes a culture people want to join.

By Janki DePalma | Small actions today can reduce stress, improve efficiency, and make life easier for your future self.

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

By Chad Clinehens | These events offer firm leaders an opportunity to connect, learn, and celebrate  – this year with a focus on ROI.

By Mark Zweig | Employees who decide to disengage and shift out completely do so at their own peril.

By Mark Zweig | Are your expectations for your people high enough, or are you letting everyone off the hook?

By Janki DePalma | Having the ability to admit your own mistakes can be refreshingly liberating and lead to real growth and connection.

By Mark Zweig | Work should be an integral part of life, so why do so many people working in AEC firms clearly not feel that way?

By Mark Zweig | When you work in a crowded field full of many companies that do essentially the same thing, you can either be one of many or you can choose to stand out.

By Liisa Andreassen | Founder of Chrisland Engineering (Lebanon, PA), a small civil engineering firm which specializes in subdivisions, land development, and municipal engineering.

By Liisa Andreassen | Managing partner of SCHRADERGROUP (Philadelphia, PA), a full-service firm that creates enhanced environments for the people who use them.

By Liisa Andreassen | President of Grace Hebert Curtis Architects, an architecture and interior design firm that is still experiencing substantial growth in size and reputation after more than 50 years.

By Liisa Andreassen | President of Martin/Martin (Denver, CO), a full-service civil and structural engineering and surveying firm founded in the 1940s.

By Alexis Eades | The consequences of burnout can be detrimental, so give your mental health the care it deserves.

By Mark Zweig | This isn’t easy, but it will ultimately make you more successful – not just as a business leader, but in life itself!

By Liisa Andreassen | Owner of Croft, Inc. (Acworth, GA), a full-service architecture and engineering firm that serves clients nationally in many diverse markets of the public and private sectors.

By Liisa Andreassen | President of Line Scale Form (Birmingham, AL), a firm with a goal of providing clients with designs that are exceptional and practical – visually, fiscally, and functionally.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (Monday, April 12, 2021) - Zweig Group, a global leader in products and services for the architecture, engineering and environmental consulting (AEC) industry, announced today that Chad Coldiron, the firm’s Director of Executive...

By Chad Clinehens | Let’s take all the support we’ve been unable to show over the past year and fire up businesses impacted by COVID.

By Kim Fowler | If you chip away at your organization goals one task at a time, you will begin to see the benefits.

By Mark Zweig | “Being allowed to teach what I’ve learned about entrepreneurship and business to my students over my long career has been one of my greatest honors and privileges.”

In our current digital and remote work environment, the basic task of note taking has become enormously important.

Leaders of employee-friendly firms talk about recruiting, culture, and the importance of employee feedback.

Vatsal Shah, VP and principal engineer with Mott MacDonald, talks about the challenges that his firm and so many other design firms are dealing with during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Satisfaction with the status quo leads to complacency. Complacency is the enemy of motivation.”

CEO of A&E Architects (Billings, MT), a firm that believes all disciplines can live together within any given project.

No one wants just a job, and no one wants to live in “quiet desperation.” As leaders, we can help employees sidestep burnout.

CEO of Chipman Design Architecture, a third-generation, family-owned firm based in Chicago, Illinois.

“As hard as it is to believe – because it has been used as a business tool for so long – people in the AEC business still don’t understand basic email etiquette.”

By John Bray | With a low unemployment rate, more firms are relying on a national approach for recruiting.

Effecting a real-life leadership transition takes years of planning, and the ability to dismiss entrenched perceptions and past assumptions.

President of Reaveley Engineers, a national structural engineering firm based in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Would you like to write for the AEC industry’s leading management newsletter? The Zweig Letter is looking for contributors throughout the org chart, from CEOs to project managers, from those in technical roles to those...

Everything feels different. Three weeks after the 2018 Hot Firm & A/E Industry Awards Conference in Dallas, our team is still on a high. Fueled by positive feedback, a wealth of exciting ideas for Las...

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,...

A successful marketing campaign is difficult to measure using hard metrics, so don’t get caught in the quicksand of trying to quantify nebulous numbers. It’s Monday, 9 a.m., and as you get comfortable in an...

All of us have a story to tell, so don’t shy away from it in your professional life. It could be the key ingredient for your firm’s success. Everyone loves a good story. That’s why...

A lot of what people call “cheese” these days really isn’t. When you’re talking about Kraft Singles, or Velveeta, for example, you aren’t talking about cheese. You are instead talking about “pasteurized, processed cheese food.”...

There’s three horses you need to ride if you are going to win the race, so saddle up with Facebook, Twitter, and a killer website. It’s time to roll up your sleeves. In this installment...

Assignments, attitudes, and acknowledgment – if you take care of the Big Three, your marketing people will do great things. I have been an A/E industry marketer since the early 1980s. In those 30-plus years,...

We’ve all experienced it. It usually happens on a Monday but it could be Friday or any other day of the week. I’m talking about when one of your most senior people surprises you with...

The leading management newsletter for A/E leaders, The Zweig Letter, announced today that its site license, in which entire firms have access to the weekly publication, is available to subscribers for as little as two...

The leading management newsletter for A/E leaders, The Zweig Letter, announced today that its site license, in which entire firms have access to the weekly publication, is available to subscribers for as little as two...

Taking a cue from Spotify, the recruiting industry is poised to create tailored playlists of design professionals looking for the ideal job. I love listening to music. I think I have a fairly diverse palate....

AEC firms have a big problem. We wait for clients to tell us what THEY want or need and then we give them a proposal. That may seem perfectly normal to you. What’s wrong with...

The two don’t have to be at odds with each other. Make sure someone’s at least answering the phones so perks don’t impede responsiveness. Coming off the high of our annual Hot Firm and A/E...

When does travel time become paid time? If you don’t know the answer, you might need to check in with the U.S. Department of Labor and dust off your policy manual. It is alarming to...

The annual employee evaluation is outdated and might just do more harm than good. Try something new. Try something better. A few years ago I read an article about how employees hate evaluations and supervisors...

Even proponents of ‘never say never’ will likely agree that these gaffes should never be committed. Though one of my favorite sayings is “never say never,” the fact is, if you work in an A/E...

By Mark C. Zweig We’ve all been through it. We have a good, old client; someone we have done a lot of business with over the years. The decision-maker with the client is someone we...

There are no easy businesses in this economy. And if you think there are— still— watch out. You’ll probably learn soon that I am right about this one. Everyone— no matter what they do— has...

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...

I’ve said it before. The standards— what we expect— from people who are supposed to sell the work to keep our staffs busy in our A/E and environmental firms— are woefully low. Forty calls a...

When you get to work with all of the different A/E/P and environmental firms that we do here at ZweigWhite & Associates, it is apparent that many firms are marching blindly ahead, doing things they...

“Training.” It sounds like a good thing, right? Everybody likes training. It’s supposed to make people better at their jobs, and that’s good for them. The business news media tells us that Generation X-ers will...

Raymond Stodge, managing principal of “Stodge Engineers and Architects,” was depressed. How would he get the firm’s executive committee to start taking action on the issues that had plagued the firm for years? And now...

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...

I am not proud of my five airline frequent flyer program gold cards. All that means is that I spend too darn much time in the air, when I’d much rather be someplace else. But...

A funny thing happened to me the other day on the way to the office...... I pulled up to a stoplight. A few seconds later, another fellow pulled up in the lane next to me...

One reason the A/E/P and environmental consulting industry is predominated by small, not-so-successful firms is that it has too many weak leaders. A firm can end up with a weak leader for many reasons. The...

I thought about a headline for this week’s treatise along the lines of “Second guessers, naysayers, and negative thinkers,” or “No more excuses,” or “Let’s cut the crap.” But I decided that none of these...

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...

I’m writing this article on Monday morning, “Marathon Day.” For those of you who didn’t know, Marathon Day is a big deal here in the Boston area. We’re planning on shutting down today between 11:00...

Road Warriors Square Off— One Monday a couple of weeks ago, I got up at 3:45 a.m. to catch a 6:00 flight from Boston’s Logan Airport, the start of a long week to come. After...

On Monday, December 20, 1993, William Edwards Deming, the 93-year-old management guru of Total Quality Management (TQM) died in his sleep. A statistician with a doctorate in Physics from Yale, Deming was credited with engineering...

The ability of an A/E or environmental consulting firm to quickly hire qualified people for any opening affects virtually every aspect of its management. I call it “supply-side human resources management.” If you think about...

Good professionals have a lot in common— no matter what their profession. Take my six year-old’s kindergarten teacher, Ms. Donohoe. Many of the professionals working in design and environmental consulting firms could learn a thing...