It goes without saying that among the key objectives of your architecture or engineering (A/E) firm’s project management team is to keep your projects on budget and your clients happy.

However, in many cases, the most commonly used A/E project management practices aren’t always the most effective in terms of meeting these goals—budget performance and client satisfaction. In fact, they can hinder more than help.

PSMJ’s A/E Project Management Study: Why the Most Common PM Practices are NOT the Best Practices provides critical data on project management practices in more than 100 A/E firms, and how they affect budget performance and client satisfaction. We were particularly interested the impact of the following:

-Project managers in today’s A/E firms, their workload and responsibilities
-How firms measure the performance of their project managers
-What firms do in terms of certifying project managers
-How firms train their project managers
-What firms do in terms of planning, executing, and closing out their projects

This important study not only provides insight into how project management best practices can improve your firm’s budget performance and client satisfaction, but also wraps up with thirteen specific recommendations based on how the most successful firms keep projects under budget, while also keeping their clients happy.