Making smaller A/E/C firms more productive and more profitable

Want to do big things with a small company? This no-nonsense guide shows leaders of smaller architecture, engineering, and design firms how to compete successfully against larger organizations without becoming one of them. It demonstrates how a smaller firm can position itself to bring more value to its clients, operate over a larger geographical area, and develop a strategic plan for increasing revenues and profits.

Featuring new chapters on forming strategic alliances and maximizing the benefits of information technology, this new edition presents updated case studies of more than fifty small design firms. These firms have achieved remarkable success and handled large contracts with limited staff, and the case studies illustrate how they learned to:

• Anticipate client needs and meet them in advance
• Narrow the target market and expand the client base
• Leverage core competencies to create powerful marketing tools
• Establish strategic partnerships
• Survive and thrive during an economic downturn

Read Staying Small Successfully, Second Edition and follow its recommendations one step at a time. Your company will stay small, but your business, your revenues, and your profits will soar.

Staying Small Successfully A Guide for Architects, Engineers, and Design Professionals Frank A. Stasiowski Today’s design professional with entrepreneurial ambitions often has in mind a small firm. Written by a veteran architect and consultant, here is a clear, detailed road map to setting up a small business or guiding an existing one to success. Using miniprofiles of several small successful design firms, the author pinpoints exactly what’s made them flourish. In a step-by-step format, he describes the six elements of the strategic planning process, tips on doubling average profit levels, building a loyal clientele, making your company a magnet for top talent, as well as measuring the financial health of your firm. This all-in-one seminar includes numerous checklists and flowcharts, a list of design firm management consultants, a typical marketing plan, and a survey of typical marketing costs. 1991 (0-471-50652-4) 297 pp. Value Pricing for the Design Firm Frank A. Stasiowski Essential to the design firm negotiating tough economic times, here is a handbook to garnering the most effective price for your services. Making the traditional cost-per-hour approach obsolete, the book teaches you how to price services based on their value to your client. Full of tactics that can be applied immediately, the book outlines the different methods of value pricing, ways to create value, a format for charging minimum fees, and a formula for price contracts. Other practical pricing tips include mini-scoping your services, charging for reimbursables, pricing change orders, as well as advice on negotiating a better contract. Complete with sample forms and lists, the book is a practical, easy-to-implement recession survival kit for the design firm. 1993 (0-471-57933-5) 240 pp. Cash Management for the Design Firm Frank A. Stasiowski While excellence in design and engineering may generate clients, monitoring and planning the movement of cash is central to a company’s survival. This practical guide outlines a det! ailed cash management plan that makes continued financial health possible even during lean economic times. Using a clear, easy-to-implement approach, the book describes: cash management techniques, project budgeting, profitable project pricing structures, controlling project and overhead costs, getting paid, and planning and monitoring performance. The book also includes valuable advice on negotiating a contract, the most profitable contract types, the purchasing process, acquiring capital equipment, and internal financial controls. Numerous checklists and exercises as well as sample reports and financial documents are included. 1993 (0-471-59711-2) 324 pp.

Focuses on how to be competitive through pricing services based upon value to the client. Contains excellent advice on managing cost, contract types, pricing change orders, cost accounting techniques, negotiating methods, liability considerations, bidding approaches and much more.

Easy access to crucial business information for design professionals

Find the concise, practical business information you need right now in the Architect’s Essentials of Professional Practice Series. These authoritative guides quickly make you an instant expert on the best business practices crucial for success in today’s design and construction professions. Each portable, affordable, user-friendly volume gives you:

• Authoritative advice from leading national figures
• Flip-and-find access to critical business information
• Bulleted lists and callout boxes for quick reference
• Clear, insightful explanations of complex business topics

Architect’s Essentials of Winning Proposals presents a complete, organized approach to writing, designing, and presenting proposals that grab clients’ attention, stand out from the crowd, and win contracts! Effectively evaluate opportunities and put your efforts into the work you’re most likely to win. You’ll learn how to design a proposal-writing process and create a proposal team that analyzes client needs and focuses each proposal on demonstrating how your firm will meet those needs. You’ll discover winning ways to personalize proposals, increase success rates, and make the entire proposal process more cost-effective.

Written by a leading expert in the field, Architect’s Essentials of Winning Proposals is an indispensable resource for architects, landscape architects, interior designers, engineers, and others whose business depends on creating effective, affordable, winning proposals.