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How to Keep Your Engineering Firm Healthy

A Quick Guide for Keeping Your Engineering Firm Healthy

The last few years proved to be significantly challenging for businesses worldwide, and engineering firms were no exception. The sudden shift to remote working, coupled with the need to maintain a positive workplace culture and adapt to the “new normal,” necessitated the implementation of effective systems and processes.

 

Engineering

Given the impact of these changes on organizational health, we have developed a practical guide specifically tailored for engineering firms. This guide serves as a valuable resource by:

  1. Highlighting the Four Key Learnings of a Healthy Engineering Firm: Understanding what constitutes a healthy engineering firm is crucial for success. The guide identifies the four key learnings that indicate a firm’s overall health, providing insights into the areas that need attention.
  2. Providing Guidelines for Maintaining Optimal Organizational Health: Once the areas requiring attention are identified, the guide offers comprehensive guidelines to help firms maintain optimal organizational health.
  3. Sharing Practical Tools for Immediate Improvement: To facilitate immediate improvement, the guide provides practical tools that can be readily implemented within your firm.
  4. Equipping Your Firm for Future Challenges: In addition to addressing the present, the guide is designed to equip your firm for any future unexpected challenges. By adopting the recommended practices, your firm can become more resilient and better prepared to navigate uncertainties that may arise.

To access the full guide, simply complete the form below to download it instantly.

Are you keen to ensure your engineering firm stays successful in the competitive market?

Silversoft, a leading provider of solutions for Engineering Consulting firms, is offering a free health check to help you gauge your firm’s standing in comparison to others in the industry. This assessment focuses on the four key learnings derived from 2020.

Participating in the health check is easy. Just take a brief 10-minute survey, and following that, you will have a call with one of our experienced Account Managers. They will provide you with a concise report that highlights your firm’s strengths and areas for improvement in the new working environment.

Take the health check survey today to gain valuable insights and enhance your firm’s performance in the ever-evolving engineering landscape.

Take the health check survey

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A Guide for Going Digital with Document and Email Management

Global research conducted by IDC, found that 21.3% of productivity loss in the workplace can be attributed to document management issues. Whether it’s employees being unable to find the right document, or being unable to access the document, according to Interact Source, almost 20% of business time, as much as one day per working week, is spent by employees trying to locate information in order to successfully complete their work.

In engineering firms alone, as much as 70% of the firm’s project information will not even be located within their document management systems, and might be found in desktop files or email servers. The result of this is scattered bits of information and unproductive workflows.

Migrating to a digital document management system is the wisest move, especially in an age when it’s best to go paperless, but the biggest driving factor would be the ability to access them anywhere (imagine you’re working remotely and realise the documents you need are locked away
in a filing cabinet at the office).

Get your free e-guide providing you with a step-by-step process of how to go about searching and implementing a document and email management system for your firm.

 

 

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How to Motivate Your Team to Produce Good Work, Even During a Global Pandemic

How to motivate your team to produce good work, even during a global pandemic

We all know what it’s like to dig deep on a Monday morning, trying to find the smallest bit of motivation to get out of bed and dress for work. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, it sort of threw the world into a permanent “Monday morning” situation. Along with the increased levels of stress and anxiety it brought to agencies and businesses all over the globe, came an adjustment to remote working and a struggle amongst employees to find motivation to be innovative and creative. 

Research conducted in partnership with Microsoft and the Boston Consulting Group, involving 9,000 managers and employees from firms across 15 European countries, revealed that, “It’s a challenge to feel connected, confident and communicate effectively with the team, and we know from a lot of research that creativity and innovation largely happen through collaboration.” A healthy team culture is achieved when employees feel motivated to be creative and productive. 

But, how do you implement this type of work environment when employees are unable to get together in the office for a good, old-fashioned creative brainstorming session?

Fortunately there are a number of effective strategies you can implement within your teams now to ensure you can harness that collaborative mentality, and motivate your team to produce creative work, at a distance. 

Ensure an effective briefing process

According to Denise Blasevick, CEO of The S3 Agency, providing a clear creative brief, a day or two before an online brainstorming sessions, is key because it “allows people to digest the information, do research, and come armed with questions along with any potential thought starters that can start the brainstorm out with a burst of energy.”

Download a helpful Creative Brief Checklist

Use virtual whiteboards for collaboration

Traditional brainstorming whiteboards are found to actually limit creativity because often one individual is responsible for recording all thoughts, whereas virtual whiteboards allow everyone to contribute, show and record their ideas. Visual collaboration in a virtual space also means you can loop in other team members who may work in different country offices. You could even use this process to encourage healthy competition, circling the “winning ideas” on the virtual whiteboard and challenging your team to suggest better ideas.

Here are a few virtual whiteboards we recommend checking out: 

Source: https://www.innovationtraining.org/what-is-mural-and-how-to-use-mural-for-design-thinking/

Encourage individual work 

Grace Judson, a leadership consultant, advises that you provide your team with limited solo brainstorming time, using a ripple effect: The first team member starts and is given 5 minutes to write out their ideas. Once they are done, the second team member goes, either coming up with new ideas, or using the ideas of the previous team member as inspiration, still on the 5-minute clock. This continues until all team members have contributed and then the results are up for discussion. 

Equip your team with a helpful brainstorming activity sheet

For many, the best way to tackle those Monday morning blues is to grab hold of a big cup of coffee. And for us, giving our team tools to help get their creative juices flowing while working from home, is the equivalent to a shot of espresso. 

Which is why we’ve developed a free, downloadable, Idea Generation Workbook that you can share with your team today – either for them to complete alone or for you to work through it with them. 

This sheet offers a few out-of-the-box ideas for brainstorming effectively, as well as formal processes they can follow to keep them focused and motivated. Before long, your team will be producing such good work, and solving every problem thrown at them, you will have forgotten remote working was ever a struggle in the first place. 

Ready to see your team’s innovative thinking thrive? Get your free Idea Generation Workbook by completing the below form.

 

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[Scorecard] Four Key Learnings from 2020 for AEC Firms

How Does Your Firm Stack Up?

AEC firms have most definitely had to either pivot or fold during a challenging 2020. From remote working, lack of travel, and client’s scaling down many firms have truly seen and experienced it all, and through the chaos, have persevered.

There are four main key learnings that have surfaced from the COVID pandemic, and there surely will be many more to come as we continue to navigate through the changed business landscape.

Here’s four key learnings that hold true for AEC firms:

1. Keep Up On Industry Trends
It is vital to keep a pulse on the industry within which your firm operates. Follow reliable external sources of information and be agile enough to adapt your KPIs based on performer benchmarks that you are following.

2. Work Smarter
Save time where possible. Identify areas in your organisation that are keeping your employees from working optimally, and ensure these are addressed.

3. Maintain a Team Culture
It is vital to maintain your culture, even when interacting with employees virtually. It protects your organisation’s identity, and helps to motivate employees.

4. Connect Your Remote Employees
Consider cloud solutions that create a safe and secure working environment for remote employees.

Compare your firm to others in the industry globally by downloading your A&E Industry Report Scorecard below:

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How Project Information Management Powers AEC Project Success

“86% of organizations see failure to digitize and automate business inputs as a key transformation bottleneck.” 

There is no denying that 2020 has been a year for the books. Within the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry, project managers, engineers, surveyors and more have shifted their processes to accompany a more diverse, remote way of working. Creating and processing information may have been a struggle prior to 2020, and now with a workforce that can be partially or even fully remote, inefficiencies with project information management can certainly come to the forefront.

In this whitepaper, you’ll discover solutions to some of the AEC industry’s most common challenges with managing project information, particularly when managing information remotely.

How to tackle project information management:

    • Identify process holes within your organisation
    • Review your data management approach
    • Take stock of on-site practices
    • Have the hard conversations
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[Report] Deltek Clarity Architecture & Engineering Industry Report

To seize the new opportunities of a changing world, A&E firms must embrace new technologies

The Deltek Clarity A&E study was conducted between 26 February and 24 March 2020, surveying 600 decisions-makers in the Architecture and Engineering industry. Key issues impacting on the A&E industry were uncovered. On a macro level, the world is in flux. While this study was conducted before the global health crisis that has dominated 2020, the results remain indicative of the key trends for the A&E sector and provide valuable insight for stakeholders keen to prosper in these times of uncertainty.

The key trends in this report:

    • Firms of all sizes want to leverage the benefits of technology to improve business processes
    • There is a willingness to embrace technology, but there is uncertainty about how to proceed
    • Senior business leaders face a dilemma as to the best path to profitability, and how technology can be enable that journey

Get the full e-Guide below.

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Legal Tech Trends

Grow your revenue, increase profitability, delight your clients.

Technology has created a generational divide between those that grew up with it and those that are adapting to it. For the former group, technology is a way of life and does not pose the psychological threat it does for older lawyers who grew up, and practiced without it. The legal profession is grappling with the realisation that technology and process are now just as important as legal expertise in the delivery of legal services.

In this white paper we explore the following key tech trends in legal:

    • Revenue Growth
    • Business Development
    • Risk Management Framework
    • Optimising Profits
    • Human Capital Management
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Improve Efficiencies with Email Management

You’ve got too much email? What are you going to do about it?

The average employee spends 28% of their week dealing with email. Put simply, email is horrible way to manage your business. It decreases productivity, increases costs and exposes your business to unnecessary risk.

But, it’s not realistic to try eliminate email completely. All you need is a solution that manages the information
contained within your email.

A solution that:

    • Integrates with your enterprise management platforms
    • Makes it easier to find, leverage and share information
    • Scale with your business without requiring additional administration or cost
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4 Ways to Avoid the Pitfalls of Over-Servicing

Increase your agency’s profit margins with accurate scoping, resourcing and job delivery.

Over-servicing or “scope creep” is a real issue faced by many agencies, but how can it be avoided in this fast-paced industry to ensure that businesses are billing clients accurately?

Download this whitepaper for some practical tips on how to:

  • Track your agency’s KPIs accurately
  • Create clear SLAs and SOWs
  • Re-evaluate your business model
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Infographic: Increase Agency Efficiency, Productivity and Profitability

Deltek’s Agency Solutions power project success by giving you better control, insight and visibility into agency operations, so your team can deliver more creative content on time and on budget.

Find out how to increase efficiency and productivity through;

    • CRM & Pipeline Management
    • Resourcing, Project Management & Collaboration
    • Proofing & Approvals
    • Finance & Accounting
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