How architecture, engineering, and construction firms find and win work: relationships built before the solicitation, positioning that gets a firm remembered, and a pipeline somebody actually owns.
Before deciding what percentage to invest in business development, define the work. Scott Mann examines the complete BD function, published industry perspectives, and the investment growing AE firms should consider.
AEC firms with an internal business development professional can still need additional capacity. BD-AEC can work alongside an existing team for a pursuit, an event, a market initiative, or a defined period of pipeline development.
Strategy gives an AEC firm direction. Creativity makes that direction visible. Execution takes it into the market. What comes back should change what happens next.
The purpose of an AEC pipeline isn’t simply to generate more work. It’s to create the right work for the people, resources, ambitions, and economics of the firm.
A $5 million engineering or architecture firm shouldn’t build its growth strategy by copying a $500 million company. The economics, resources, opportunities, and people are different.
For small and mid-sized AEC firms, discovering an opportunity when it is advertised isn’t necessarily a failure of business development.
Your technical professionals should be part of business development. That doesn't mean they should be responsible for making it happen.
AEC firms need business development capacity. The real question is whether to build that capability internally or plug into a team already doing the work.
Referrals built the firm, and then referrals became the ceiling. A practical look at how engineering firms add clients beyond the network: deliberate relationships, sharper positioning, and public QBS work.
The RFP is the end of the buyer's process, not the start of yours. Here's what firms that win consistently do before the RFP ever drops, and why response-only firms keep finishing second.
