A/E/C Industry Posts Archives - JDB Engineering, Inc.

Jan 02 2019

Stop! Should You Really Submit that Proposal?

Note: this blog post originally appeared as a LinkedIn Article as “Proposals: Red Flags and Dirty Tricks.”

If you’ve spent any amount of time creating proposals, then you’ve undoubtedly seen all sorts of questionable behavior by proposal requestors. Sure, they send out an RFP (or post it online), asking for responses, acting like they want many proposals in order to make an informed decision. And then then they create traps to disqualify those proposals so they don’t have to read them. Some common approaches:

Extremely tight proposal deadlines making it almost impossible to respond
Limited number of pages, making it almost impossible to be responsive to the RFP criteria
Strict requirements on font, point size, spacing, etc. – little things that make it easy to get your proposal disqualified (“You used 10-point font size? Off with your head!”)
Vague language with no knowledgeable person to contact for clarity
Highly restrictive requirements for staff experience, license/certification, or relevant past experience
Outrageous project schedule requirements or contract terms (that may not even be insurable)
Continually revising the RFP and changing the requirements / scope while not changing the due date

These are all red flags that demonstrate the pitfalls of responding to a proposal unless you really know the client/agency and have an established rapport with them. That’s not to say that you need to have a deep relationship with every client you submit a proposal to (how often are the final decision makers / selection committee members “hidden” to the proposers, anyway?), or even that a good relationship would prevent some of these behaviors. Rather, these are clues that if you’re not “in the know” about the opportunity, then you shouldn’t waste your time submitting a proposal (the proposal requestor doesn’t want it, anyway!).

In many cases, your competitor very well may have written the RFP document. They wrote it so restrictively that only their firm could check all the boxes! And you know what? You’d do the same thing if given the opportunity (and many of us have). However, there’s also a trap here. Another bad behavior you’ll come across is the proposal requestor that reaches out to you for a proposal and detailed scope of work to a project that may not be well-defined. “What do you think this project will take?”, they ask. And then after you spend many hours pulling something together, everything goes quiet – or you get ghosted. You thought you had a 95% probability of being awarded the project, yet they won’t even return your calls or emails. And then, low and behold, one day an email arrives from that prospect. Unfortunately, it contains a Request for Proposal which just happens to include that detailed scope of work you developed – almost verbatim. And they sent the RFP to your competitors, as well. So essentially you did all the legwork for the RFP, and now you have to bid to get the project.

Most of my time is spent in the architecture, engineering, and construction (#AEC) space, but I’ve been involved with proposals from other perspectives as well, particularly in the nonprofit realm. Recently I saw some of the same old red flags and dirty tricks in an RFP – as well as a new one! These included:

Sending RFPs to groups that had no business in actually responding – they didn’t have the qualifications or the capacity
Including RFP requirements so time-consuming that it would be impossible to comply in the allotted time
Including RFP requirements so cost-prohibitive that few (if any) recipients could submit a truly responsive proposal

You may be shaking your head because you’ve seen this kind of thing before. But here’s the new one:

Not publishing any limitations on word count or file size (only that the proposal must be electronically delivered in a single Word document), and then rejecting any file 1 MB or larger at submission

So you could spend weeks working on the proposal, trying to cross as many t’s and dot as many i’s as possible (not that it was possible to get them all!), finalize the proposal just before the deadline (the world most of us work in), click the link to upload the file, and only once you have attempted to submit the file find out that there is a limitation on file size!

I don’t have a fundamental problem with file size limitations, but there are two glaring issues here:

Not making proposers aware of any file size limits in advance.
Requiring files to be less than 1 MB – what is this, 1993?

The average smart phone photo is probably 2 or 3 MB – no different than it was in the early days of smart phones, thus a 1 MB file is small by today’s standards. For most proposals, it’s downright tiny. Therefore, a 1 MB file size limit would be a “red flag” had it been published to proposers. Not disclosing that limit and essentially using it as a way to reject proposals is a downright “dirty trick”!

You can argue whether there was Machiavellian intent, or it was simple ignorance that caused the issue. However, when you look at the other red flags – before even getting to this little trick – you can clearly see that the proposal requestor had little interest in actually receiving any proposals.

They had already pre-ordained the winner – and perhaps the “winner” was the status quo. (A colleague once told me that the biggest competitor will always be the status quo.)

If you make the RFP so restrictive, invite unqualified groups to submit, and then create a layer of “security” to disqualify any potentially-responsible proposals, it’s easy to say, “We didn’t receive any proposals that met our criteria, so we are going to (fill in the blank).”

And in this case, the blank may be “proceed as planned,” “stay with our current firm,” or “not move forward with the project/initiative.”

Downstream, however, there’s a feeling of frustration, disappointment, even dejection. Large amounts of time have been wasted in pursuit of an opportunity that was never going to pan out. The opportunity costs can be staggering when this kind of thing happens.

I’m a big proponent of making quality, objective Go/No-Go decisions based upon data and facts (as opposed to the all-too-common subjective, “Sure we can do that!” decisions). And yet, there are many red flags that go unnoticed or are intentionally ignored, costing organizations huge wheelbarrows of cash and their employees massive black holes of productive time.

What are some of the proposal red flags and dirty tricks that you’ve seen?

Interested in upping your proposal game? jdbIQity offers a four-hour proposal workshop for project managers and marketing professionals to learn about best practices and proposal trends. Contact Scott Butcher at sbutcher@jdbe.com or 717-434-1543 to learn more.

Connect with Scott

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottdbutcher
Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottdbutcher

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Nov 07 2018

The State of the A/E/C Industry

By Scott D. Butcher, FSMPS, CPSM

What are the current economic conditions within the architecture, engineering, and construction industry? How are the market sectors and geographic regions performing?

There are quite a few indicators that track the health of the industry, and we’ve gathered many of the major metrics in one place to make your environmental scanning easy as you head into planning for 2019!

Click on the image to enlarge the State of the A/E/C Industry infographic, or surf here for a downloadable PDF for sharing!

Architectural Billings

The first stop on this tour of the A/E/C industry’s economic health is the American Institute of Architects’ Architectural Billings Index (ABI), which is broken into several categories. Overall, the ABI for billings is at 51.1 for the latest month. As the ABI is a diffusion index, any score above 50.0 demonstrates growth over the prior month, while any score below indicates decline. The most current data available is for September 2018, and the score of 51.1 demonstrates a billings increase over August. However, the August score was 54.2, so we know that although the billings continue to increase, there is a decreasing rate of growth.

The AIA tracks Design Contracts and Project Inquiries as well. While billings is a lagging indicator – that is, the work has already happened – Design Contracts are very much a real-time indicator, capturing what is happening right now. In August, there was a retraction in contracts with a score of 49.6. However, the index rebounded in September with a score of 54.1, a significant jump. Project Inquiries is a leading indicator of future workload. The September score of 58.8 is impressive, building upon the 58.0 score of the prior month.

Additionally, with the latest ABI survey, the AIA asked architects about revenues for the year, and as an average, AIA members are projecting a net revenue growth of 7.5% for the year.

The ABI is also broken into four large geographic regions. Three of the four experienced billings growth in September:

Midwest = 59.7 (52.5 in August)
West = 51.3 (54.2 in August)
South = 54.1 (57.0 in August)

The Midwest experienced a major increase in growth, while the West and South both reported slowing growth. However, the Northeast did not fare as well, seeing a steeper decline in billings than it had the prior month:

Northeast = 46.6 (46.9 in August)

In addition to geographic regions, the ABI is also broken into major market sectors as follows:

Commercial/Industrial = 50.8 (53.6 in August)
Institutional = 55.1 (52.3 in August)
Residential = 54.9 (55.6 in August)

All markets experienced an increase in billings in September, although the growth in Commercial/Industrial as well as Residential billings slowed compared to the August data.

A/E/C Employment Trends

The next series of charts depicts the employment trends for A/E/C firms, based upon data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. All three data sets demonstrate healthy growth over the past year, although architectural employment, as well as engineering and drafting employment, both depict summer peaks and autumn declines. This is typical of prior years.

Architectural employment in July hit its highest number since November 2008. Likewise, engineering employment hit a new peak in August. Construction employment has not seen the autumn decline of architecture/engineering, and October data shows the highest employment figure since April 2008.

Please note that the figures for September and October 2018 are preliminary.

Confidence & Momentum

Consumer Confidence in the United States, as tracked by The Conference Board, reached an 18-year high in October 2018 with a 2.6 point increase over September.

There’s also an industry-specific confidence metric, published by Associated Builders and Contractors and known as the ABC Construction Confidence Index (CCI). The ABC index is broken into Sales Expectations and Profit Margin (as well as Staffing Levels), and is a quarterly metric. Second quarter data from 2018 was released in late September, and is the most current period available. Like the AIA’s ABI, the data utilizes a diffusion index, with any score above 50.0 demonstrating an increase over the prior period. Survey participants are asked about their expectations for the forthcoming six months.

The CCI for Sales Expectations climbed to 72.6 in the second quarter, up from an already-impressive 72.2. Likewise, the CCI for Profit Margin climbed to 64.5, up from 63.4 in the first quarter. The CCI for Staffing Levels (not shown) fell back slightly, from 70.2 to 69.5, but this figure is still historically high according to ABC.

Another relevant metric is published by Dodge Data & Analytics, known as the Dodge Momentum Index. The index is published monthly and the prior month is often revised at the same time. Dodge further breaks the data into Commercial Building and Institutional Building.

The overall figure for September demonstrates a decline of 2.6% in the index, with Commercial Buildings down 4.3% and Institutional Buildings down 0.1%. This was the second straight month of decline, although the third quarter figure is up from the second quarter. Because the index tracks the first, or initial, report of a nonresidential construction project in the planning stage, a handful of large projects can influence the index from month-to-month. Overall, the trend for the year is still positive. For benchmarking, the year of 2000 represents a Momentum Index reading of 100. This index is an indicator of future construction.

Spending, Backlog & More

Construction Put in Place is a data set published monthly by the US Census Bureau. Although it is a lagging indicator – construction has occurred – it is a useful metric for trending, and also provides a way to analyze the activity in 16 market sectors.

The data is reported two ways; first, the current month is compared with the prior month. Second, the current month is compared with the same month the prior year. For this report, I’m using the year-over-year comparison, which demonstrates that 14 of 16 markets have experienced growth over the past 12 months.

Only Communications and Religious facilities saw declines over a year ago. Furthermore, seven sectors saw double-digit growth in September 2018, compared with September 2017.

Overall, the metric is showing an 8.9% increase in Construction Put in Place compared with a year ago. Water Supply, Conservation & Development, Transportation, and Lodging were the biggest gainers, while Commercial, Manufacturing, and Health Care saw the smallest levels of growth. This data demonstrates an increase in infrastructure construction – something that has been talked about for years.

Another metric reported by the US Census Bureau is US Nonresidential Construction Spending, and again it is compared against the previous month as well as 12 months prior. Although the data shows a decrease in construction spending from August 2018 to September 2018, there is significant growth over September 2017.

In addition to the Construction Confidence Index, ABC also publishes a quarterly Construction Backlog Indicator, broken into regions and project types. The columns on this chart demonstrate the average backlogs in months, while the circles depict variances from the previous quarter, in percent.

The average backlog is now 9.9 months, which is a new high for this index. Note that this data is for the second quarter, which is the most current data available. This is also an increase of 12.2% over the previous quarter.

Broken into regions, firms in the South are experiencing the largest backlog levels, slightly more than 11 months. The Middle States region tracked by ABC is the only geographic area not seeing double-digit backlog figures, and also the only region to see a decline, although slight, over the prior quarter.

Firms operating in all three market sectors tracked by ABC experienced growth in backlogs, with both Commercial/Institutional and Infrastructure firms seeing backlogs of just over 10 months. Firms operating in the Heavy Industrial sector report backlog averages of 7.8 months; however, this is a jump of 33% over the prior quarter.

One final metric tracked in this report is open US Construction Sector Jobs, based upon data from multiple sources including the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The figure for August 2018 – the most current available – was 298,000 open jobs, significantly up from the 215,000 figure of August 2017. This trend is not new, although it appears to be picking up speed as construction firms across the country continue to struggle with finding qualified employees. In addition to negatively impacting construction firms’ ability to pursue and deliver projects, the worker shortage also appears to be leading to increased wages, potentially driving inflation growth in construction costs. Stay tuned to see what impact this trend will have on the A/E/C industry.

There’s our latest A/E/C environmental scan. Are there other metrics that you regularly track?

Are you pulling together your strategic and marketing plans for 2019? Need help with planning or facilitation? Contact me at 717-434-1543 or sbutcher@jdbe.com to discuss how jdbIQity can help position your firm for a successful year (and beyond)!

Connect with Scott

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottdbutcher
Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottdbutcher

Apr 04 2018

JDB Engineering Staff Present at Regional, National Conferences

JDB Engineering staff continue to speak to audiences large and small!

Craig G. Malesic, LC, EIT, PMP, recently presented Lighting for Mood at the National Facilities Management & Technology Expo (NFMT) in Baltimore, MD. NFMT is the largest facilities management trade show in the United States. Craig’s presentation is part of our AIA CES program, and offers 1.0 AIA LU/HSW.

Scott D. Butcher, FSMPS, CPSM also presented at NFMT, his second time speaking there. Co-presenting with William R. Long, PE, LEED AP, FSMPS of P. Agnes, their topic was Mastering Soft Skills to Enhance Success. Scott also recently gave a keynote address at the SMPS SunBuilt regional conference in Atlanta, GA, speaking about megatrends in the A/E/C industry – another one of JDB Engineering’s AIA CES LU programs. He also recently presented about trends to SMPS Chicago and SMPS New York.

Interested in having one of JDB Engineering’s speakers present at your next event – or scheduling a lunch-and-learn program with our subject matter experts? JDB Engineering currently has 22 programs approved for AIA LU/HSW or AIA LU. Surf here to check out the programs. Email or call Scott Butcher at 717-434-1543 if you are interested in learning more.

Nov 01 2017

Those that Lead, Speak. And Write.

by Scott D. Butcher, FSMPS, CPSM

For the past several years, “content marketing” has been the buzzword in the business world. We’ve all been told about the importance of blogs, ebooks, white papers, vlogs (video blogs), and more. And we’ve seen how some of the leading firms in our industry – of all sizes, by the way – have embraced digital technologies and utilized content as an effective marketing strategy. At the same time, we’ve seen firms that have struggled to create a useful website or any meaningful presence on social media.

I’m a huge fan of content marketing. But too many people have a narrow definition of “content.” To me, the industry thought leaders have been using content all along, well before the advent of the World Wide Web and Internet of Things (IoT)!

Public speaking was probably the original form of content marketing. Someone had an idea, and they stood in front of a group of people and shared their idea, hoping for buy-in. Somewhere along the way, a particularly innovative Neanderthal probably stood in front of a group of family members and suggested that the wooly mammoth would taste much better if they cooked it over a fire instead of eating it raw. That was content marketing! He had an idea (the concept of using fire to cook meat) and he shared his knowledge, hoping to persuade an audience. And imagine the demand that was created when other families learned about it and came knocking on his cave, asking for his expertise and offering to pay him in berries or pelts! Sounds suspiciously like content marketing to me!

Public speaking may have evolved since that time, but it is still an excellent way to share knowledge, build name recognition, and create demand. Client organizations, professional societies, service clubs, conferences, and trade shows are all looking for subject matter experts to share knowledge. This is as true today as it was before computers, smart phones, blogs, and social media!

Likewise, writing has always been a form of content marketing. Just ask Thomas Jefferson. A little-known piece he wrote entitled The Declaration of Independence is a masterpiece of content marketing, and was used throughout the thirteen original colonies – which were suddenly states of a new nation – as a call to arms to fight for independence. You might say that it went viral. Of course, those pesky editors are ever-present, as was the case here. But when your editors are John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, that’s not necessarily a bad thing! (And everyone needs an editor!)

Content marketing is not new. We just have a lot more channels at our disposal.

Why is this important? It seems to me that many A/E/C firms are resistant to content marketing. They think it is a waste of time. They think that no one wants to hear what they have to say, much less read what they have to write. So they avoid new marketing technologies, or even criticize their marketing professionals who want to help move their firms into the twenty-first century!

I recently had a conversation with a technical professional, who had a negative view of blogs. During the conversation, I shared an example of how a single blog on our website had outdrawn our home page over the past year! His response was that people who were finding us via that blog were not people we wanted, and that if he was researching the topic, he wouldn’t go to an engineering firm’s website. When I queried about the facts he used to arrive at this opinion, he had none.

And therein lies much of the problem with resistance to content marketing. Technical professionals in leadership positions too often fail to understand the audience for content, much less the value of meaningful, regularly updated information on your website. With this specific individual, I offered that because the blog was a home run, our firm was being looked at as a thought leader on the topic. And furthermore, that the traffic it was generating was exposing new, potential clients – or referrers – to our company. And finally, that the content was meant for consumption by clients and prospects looking to learn, not technical professionals that already have a far more advanced knowledge of the topic!

Firms need to reframe “content marketing.” It is not just a blog or a video. It is a presentation to a client organization. Or an article in a magazine or newsletter. And often, the idea that begins with a blog or survey or social media post leads to opportunities to write articles and speak at organizations and conferences!

Clients want to work with thought leaders. They want to work with design and construction professionals that they perceive to be a “cut above” the commoditized masses they see when they look at us. Thought leadership via content marketing is an excellent way to do this. It allows small firms to look like big firms. It allows you to create a competitive edge in the marketplace, and establish yourself or your co-workers as leaders in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry.

You don’t have to be the Neanderthal who invented grilling, nor the author of a document that created a new nation. Write or speak about what you know. Figure out how this information could be of value to a client or prospective client. And then look at the myriad content marketing channels available to you, online or offline, and focus on one or two. Your firm and your career will thank you!

Wondering how thought leadership can enhance your brand – company or personal? Check out jdbIQity’s offerings, or contact Scott D. Butcher, FSMPS, CPSM.

A version of this article originally appeared in Professional Services Management Journal, July 2016.

Connect with Scott

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottdbutcher
Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottdbutcher

Sep 27 2017

Scott Butcher Continues to Present Nationally

JDB Engineering vice president and CMO, Scott D. Butcher, FSMPS, CPSM, has a busy fall schedule presenting at or moderating industry programs. He recently moderated the MEGA Meeting, an Atlanta-based event of eight A/E/C industry organizations: AIA, ACEC, AGC, ABC, CMAA, DBIA, SAME, and SMPS. More than 250 professionals attended the program. The topic centered around Building the Future Workforce.

Next up is a presentation at the popular PSMJ Thrive conference, which will be held in Denver this year. This marks Scott’s third time presenting at the conference, and he’ll be joining SMPS CEO Michael Geary, CAE to present about The 21st Century Marketer.

In November, Scott will be pulling double duty in New York City at The Marketing Event, an A/E/C educational program hosted by SMPS New York. Here Scott will again join SMPS CEO Michael Geary, CAE to present about The 21st Century Marketer, and join P. Agnes associate vice president William R. Long, PE, LEED AP, FSMPS to debut a new program, Creating a Training Program that will Elevate Your Company.

Finally, November also sees Scott presenting about Personal Reputation Management in Naples, FL, at the Growth & Ownership Strategies Conference hosted by Rusk O’Brien Gido + Partners. This presentation is based upon Scott’s book, Reputation Design+Build: Creating Winning Personal Brands for Engineering, Design & Construction Professionals.

Looking for a speaker or moderator for your next event? Contact Scott directly at sbutcher@jdbe.com or 717-434-1543 to learn about JDB Engineering’s many program options, or check out our Speakers Bureau.

Stop! Should You Really Submit that Proposal?

Connect with Scott

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The State of the A/E/C Industry

Architectural Billings

A/E/C Employment Trends

Confidence & Momentum

Spending, Backlog & More

Connect with Scott

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JDB Engineering Staff Present at Regional, National Conferences

Those that Lead, Speak. And Write.

Scott Butcher Continues to Present Nationally