Executive Corner: Can the A/E Industry Re-accelerate Its Growth?
Ten years ago, 2006, was arguably the A/E and environmental-consulting industry’s peak of financial performance and achievement. Architects and engineers everywhere took advantage of unprecedented gains in commercial and residential building, while surging tax receipts and a post-9/11 world provided steady demand for new federal, municipal and security infrastructure. Institutional, educational, energy and telecommunication markets all flourished. Companies of all disciplines and sizes were inun...
Structural Solutions: Picking Partners to Manage Risk
In the previous issue of Informed Infrastructure, I wrote about how sometimes things happen in our lives that help us do better and avoid trouble later in life. The scout-leadership training obstacle course I talked about did just that (see “Managing Risk through Careful Planning,” March/April 2016, page 14). A lack of planning by the scouts in my leadership group resulted in a poor outcome, at least for me, and ultimately poor risk management. At my firm, we try to leverage past experiences as...
Managing the Model: Varied Organizations Lead the Charge for AEC Improvements
For nearly 15 years, my company, Engineered Efficiency, has worked with thousands of AEC users and firms to help them get the most out of the technology they use (or could be using). But this is a large industry with a tremendous amount of variety and disparate technology needs, so it takes a combined effort to truly effect change. Luckily, there are a number of people and organizations dedicated to the same goal, ranging from individual evangelists to organizations that exist only to promote pr...
Infrastructure Outlook: Key Points You Need to Know About Aerial Photography
By Sherry and Brett Eklund No matter the project at hand, knowledge is power. The more perspective an engineer can gain when planning or completing a job, the better. An aerial photographer, offering insights and data that can’t be gathered any other way, is an essential member of the team. Aerial photography provides an unmatched tool in evaluating a landscape before breaking ground, and it’s extremely helpful for assessing project milestones and reporting to offsite team members and ma...
Structural Solutions: Managing Risk through Careful Planning
In my later years in the Boy Scouts, the senior leaders took us older scouts on a leadership-training obstacle course—the equivalent of some of today’s office teamwork outings. One particularly memorable obstacle had two telephone pole uprights about six feet apart, a low bar about four feet off the ground wrapped with barbed wire that hung to the ground, a high steel pipe about eight to nine feet off the ground, and a gym rope with a loop in one end. You couldn’t go around. You couldn’t go...
Executive Corner: Frequently Asked Questions about A/E Ownership Transitions
Of the wide-ranging internal-ownership inquiries my firm receives, most can be distilled into just a few ideas that ultimately answer the same question: “How can my firm make an internal transition process work?” So I thought I’d reflect on the most commonly asked questions, and offer guidance and advice on ways that will help strengthen your firm’s approach to internal ownership transition. Q: “My partners and I have an idea as to when we’d each like to start pulling back a little, but it’s st...
Managing the Model: Getting the Lead on the Late Majority
A longtime acquaintance recently started an engineering design firm, and he asked me and my staff at Engineered Efficiency to help him get their AEC technology up and running. Right now, his company is small and has a clean slate: they don’t have any bad habits to break and can take a big-picture view of how they want to integrate design and modeling technology into their business. As we worked through a short checklist of the basics, such as software to buy, hardware for office and remote st...
Structural Solutions: Engineering without a Net
I was flipping around the cable channels a while back and happened across a show about “The Flying Wallendas.” I had heard of the Wallendas as a kid, but I didn’t realize they had been performing since the late 1700s, a remarkable seven generations. In the 1920s, however, Karl Wallenda put the family on the map when they started performing their balancing acts without nets. Nik Wallenda, the most-recent performing Wallenda, has taken it a step further and also practices without a safety net o...
Managing the Model: Why Do A/E Firms Hate BIM?
It’s possible that “hate” in this column’s title is too strong a sentiment—perhaps “have indifference toward BIM” is more appropriate. I spend a lot of time talking to owners and department managers at A/E firms, and a common chorus I repeatedly hear is “there’s no need to move to BIM.” To be sure, “The Business Value of BIM for Infrastructure” report by McGraw-Hill found that 59 percent of A/E firms understand the benefits of BIM and have adopted it. What’s not clear is how the term “adopted...
Executive Corner: Five Takeaways on 2015 A/E M&A Activity
Fueled by cheap debt, a restless and activist investor climate, and a desire to accelerate growth through economies of scale and efficiencies, global mergers and acquisitions (M&A) across all industries hit an all-time high in 2015. In fact, this year will break the dollar volume M&A record achieved back in 2007. Every few days saw one massive transformational combination announced after another: Dow Chemical/DuPont, Pfizer/Allergan, Dell/EMC, AB InBev/SABMiller, Kraft/Heinz, Walgreens/Rite Aid,...
Stormwater Interview with Robert Page, P.E., Vice President, HNTB
Santa Barbara County North Branch Jail Expansion
February Issue 2026
