Fact 1: Good AEC Recruiting is Like Good Marketing. Frustrated that you aren’t attracting the highest quality candidates for your AEC firm's job openings? It is time to get your marketing team involved. Build a pipeline of strong candidates by applying many of the same strategies they use to build your pipeline of strong clients. 

For starters, get serious about content marketing and amplify the heck out of it on social media. Create awareness and build interest with a series of blog posts featuring client success stories, or video interviews with your project teams describing what it feels like to work at your firm. Your next great hire is probably going to your social media accounts to get a sense of your brand, team, and culture. Let that be where you make the sale!  

Fact 2: Survey Spotlight: 2025 AE Project Manager Salary Data. PSMJ’s just-released 2025 AE Management and Staff Compensation Benchmark Survey shows a median salary for AE Project Managers of $111,318 (base salary before bonus compensation). This represents a 3.2% increase from the previous year, which is down slightly from a 3.7% increase between the 2023 and 2024 surveys. Note that not all surveys are equal! PSMJ’s 2025 AE Management and Staff Compensation Benchmark Survey data was collected in January and February 2025. Some other “2025” surveys are actually using old responses, and you shouldn't consider them when comparing your firm’s compensation to peer firms.

Fact 3: Facing More Competition? Do This…Now. When conditions soften in a particular client market, bigger firms start chasing smaller projects and, overall, you start seeing more firms chasing few projects. What do you do? Get closer to your strategic clients. Conduct a client satisfaction survey and learn where you are strong and where you aren’t. Use this data to build a moat around your highest quality clients. By the way, if they don’t offer any criticism about your fees, that might be your sign that your fees are too low. To focus on your highest quality clients, consider saying goodbye to your low-value/high-maintenance clients, and watch employee morale and productivity improve. 

Fact 4: Your AI Strategy is Probably Flawed! So many AEC firm leaders (rightfully so) are talking about AI these days. But, for many of these firm leaders, the desire is to get in front of the opportunity with an AI strategy…and that's the wrong way of looking at it. Just having an “AI strategy” is like scrambling to develop an “internet strategy” 30 years ago. Instead, start with a close look at your strategic plan to identify specific friction points where AI may be able to provide a solution. For example, if leadership transition is a primary priority, then knowledge management might be an area where AI provides a solution. Without operational and strategic goals driving them, AI investments can quickly become expensive tools in search of a problem.

Fact 5: How Old is Too Old? Last weekend, famed investor and philanthropist  Warren Buffett announced that he was stepping away from his role as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at the age of 94. While this may work just fine for Berkshire Hathaway, waiting too long to transition leadership can be very problematic for AEC firms. Besides the obvious capitalization problem, if ownership isn’t transferred in a timely and orderly manner, holding onto leadership for too long can also send some of your best successors searching for greener pastures if they see a logjam at the top. The path to growth and development in your firm should always be clear and achievable.