A/E/C THRIVE PRE-SUMMIT DAY

What economic, market, demographic, design, and engineering forces will shake the ground under your A/E/C practice next year? In the next 10? Spend the morning with best-selling author, futurist, and PSMJ founder Frank Stasiowski, FAIA as he shows you how to prepare for the upcoming decade of disruption by stretching your mind to accept trends once thought impossible but are now inevitable.

You and your fellow workshop participants get practical insights into how changing demographics, globalization, government expansion, and technology advances can benefit firms that plan ahead — and be devastating for those that don’t prepare. 

"IoT, quantum computing, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, climate change, bioengineering, and increasing longevity are just a few of these forces creating new opportunities and challenges," Frank says. 

From the 10 emerging technologies that will change how buildings are constructed to the 4^th industrial revolution connecting more and more systems to share data, from where design jobs will disappear forever to skills the most valuable candidates will bring, from emerging megatrends in infrastructure spending to radical new approaches to fees, compensation, and risk allocation, Stasiowski provides you with a blueprint for both strategic and tactical planning -- and radically shifting your perspective on where growth and profit opportunities lie. 

If you found $48,000 on the ground, would you pick it up? Of course you would. So why aren't you taking similarly simple steps in your business management processes to add that, and much more, to your bottom line?

The best-in-class A/E/C firms delivered profit margins north of 40% last year. With sound guidance and proven practices, that sort of profit margin may be closer than you think.

In this transformative session, learn PSMJ’s 3-step process to improve project performance and profitability, including how to achieve higher profits firm-wide, simple steps to build higher margins into project plans, red-flag metrics that alert you to future problems, how to accurately forecast profitability in real-time, and more.

Workshop leader Jay McRae will reveal how to use the SUM (salary-to-expense, utilization, multiplier) metrics as a comprehensive management tool, price work competitively, and grow revenue and profit. He’ll discuss–using practical steps and examples—how firm leadership can move from lackluster profits to brilliant performance. You’ll learn:

• Ways to improve operating efficiencies
• Why you don’t have to accept paltry profits
• How to take a disciplined approach to better performance
• The best way to make existing work profitable

As a management consultant, Jay is frequently sought out by A/E/C firm leaders to improve their profitability, facilitate mergers and acquisitions, and lead project and financial management training programs. Join your colleagues in this breakthrough workshop to learn how to improve your firm’s profit margins. 

In May 2019, the World Health Organization officially recognized burnout as an occupational phenomenon. That should come as no surprise to A/E/C principals trying to maximize financial opportunities in the currently robust economic environment. Could you make more money, work fewer hours, and preserve the mental health of your most valuable employees by radically flipping your pricing structure on its ear by changing to a value-pricing model? 

 In this practical, hands-on workshop, PSMJ founder and CEO Frank Stasiowski shares his secrets for: 

• Presenting value pricing
• Miniscoping
• Pricing reimbursables
• Pricing change orders
• Project cost control
• Fee negotiations and bidding approaches
• Liability management
• And much more.

Revolutionize your firm, and attack the growing problem of employee burnout, when you apply Frank’s value pricing philosophy to your proposal practices.

"With value pricing, Frank encourages us to become smarter engineers and to become more valuable to our clients. Frank has helped us find the part of our business that creates the bond between us and our clients that’s nearly inseparable. He teaches us to be always engaged with our client all the time. I’m not just a reader of his book on the subject, I’m a disciple.”

-Steve Chase, Executive Vice President & Principal, TES Engineering

Understand how you as a leader need to think about new technology and its impact on your firm’s structure and growth plan. You learn where firms are seeing actual returns, where client expectations and competitive pressures are driving tech adoption, and how to avoid a million-dollar mistake when allocating resources.

Get out and about with a fascinating first-hand account of the events surrounding the most devastating natural - and man-made - disaster on American soil with an A/E expert’s chronology of events leading up to Hurricane Katrina and the days immediately following the disaster. The tour includes a levee that “breached” and, on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, visiting the New Basin Canal Lighthouse destroyed by Katrina but reconstructed and reopened in 2013.