You need aBD Director.You don't needa full-time salary.
Your engineers bill $300 an hour. So why are they writing proposals and chasing leads? BD-AEC is an embedded, fractional business development director for architecture, engineering, and construction firms, running your pipeline so your specialists stay specialists.
The math
A principal who bills $300 an hour loses that rate every hour they spend on business development they were never trained to do.
every BD hour is one $300 hour gone
The territory
One corridor. Michigan to Florida.
AEC firms corridor-wide
metros along the corridor
states, Michigan to Florida
Scott runs one corridor, Michigan to Florida, and knows the owners, primes, and agencies on it.
National BD consultants don't work this geography. We do, market by market, with the relationships that win qualifications-based work before the RFQ ever drops.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns (NAICS 5413, 2022).
The problem
Most AEC firms run BD off the side of a desk
Principals doing BD
Your senior engineers and architects, the ones billing $250 to $400 an hour, are writing proposals, chasing intros, and following up on cold leads instead of doing the work clients actually pay for.
Reactive pipeline
Business development happens between deadlines, when someone remembers. There is no system, no consistent outreach, and no one owns the relationships that turn into repeat work.
Full-time cost, part-time need
A seasoned AEC business development director commands six figures plus benefits. Most $1M to $20M firms need that expertise, but not a full-time salary line to get it.
How it works
An embedded BD director, not another consultant
Discovery
We map your firm, your verticals, your best clients, your win patterns, and where revenue is actually leaking.
BD strategy
A focused plan: which markets and project types to pursue along the corridor, which relationships to build, and what to stop chasing.
Embedded execution
Scott runs the pipeline as your fractional BD director, outreach, relationships, teaming, and pursuit, so your engineers stay billable.
Ongoing partnership
A steady cadence of qualified opportunities and a pipeline that keeps moving without pulling your principals off the work.
Current engagements · Scott Mann, Director of Business Development
Four firms. Four disciplines. One corridor.
BD-AEC represents non-competing firms across the I-75 corridor. By policy, Scott will not represent two firms in the same vertical, project type, and market, an ethical line that protects every client's pipeline.
Beyond the corridor · National reach
The model travels. Other side of the country.
Eastern Sierra Engineering is proof a corridor-tested BD practice wins anywhere. Scott runs business development for ESE in the Reno-Tahoe region, nearly 2,000 miles from I-75, across an expanded civil, geotechnical, and environmental scope. ESE works in the Lake Tahoe Basin, widely considered the most environmentally regulated watershed in the country, where the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and a bi-state stack of watershed rules govern work most firms never touch. Same standard, opposite coast.
- Region
- Reno-Tahoe, NV
- Scope
- Civil · Geo · Env
- Watershed
- Lake Tahoe
- From I-75
- ~2,000 mi
Eastern Sierra Engineering
Who it's for
Built for principal-led AEC firms
Established AEC firms doing $1M to $20M in revenue, or on track to by 2027, where the principals are still carrying business development themselves.
See the verticals we serve- Civil & geotechnical
- Site, infrastructure, and geostructural firms competing for public and private work across the corridor.
- Architecture
- Commercial and institutional practices that win on relationships and reputation, not cold bids.
- Structural & specialty engineering
- Specialist firms whose principals are the product, and whose time is far too valuable for cold outreach.
- Construction & design-build
- Builders and design-build teams that need a steady, qualified pipeline along the I-75 corridor.
Ready to stop leaving work on the table?
Book a discovery call. We'll map where your pipeline is leaking and what a fractional BD Director would own.