Tag Archive for: project management

, , , ,

[Infographic] Deltek Clarity Architecture and Engineering Industry Study 2023

The 44th Annual Deltek Clarity Architecture & Engineering Study

The 44th Annual Deltek Clarity Architecture & Engineering Study is a comprehensive report that provides insights into the state of the A&E industry. The study was conducted between January and March 2023, and included data from a variety of firms from all sizes and regions across the United States and Canada.

The study found that the A&E industry is facing a number of challenges, including increasing competition, rising costs, and a shortage of skilled labor. However, the study also found that the industry is still growing, and that there are opportunities for firms that are able to adapt to the changing landscape.

The study includes a number of valuable insights for A&E firms, including:

  • How to compete in a crowded market
  • How to manage rising costs
  • How to attract and retain skilled labor
  • How to use technology to improve efficiency

The full study is available for download on the Deltek website. To download the study, click here: [link to study]

/by
, ,

5 Steps To Scaling Your Agency

5 handy steps to scale your operations without falling behind

With great expansion comes great responsibility.

Making new connections and supplying top-of-the-range services are key targets for agencies. It feels affirming to win new business, but while your company grows, your internal and external operations need to keep up.

It can be challenging to scale operations with a myriad of technologies and partner services to choose from.

Fear not, as here are five key ways to grow and stay ahead of the pack.

  1. Identify your niche…

…and stick to it!

One pitfall that agencies face when starting out is being ‘people pleasers’ – trying to adapt operations to suit every single need. This will stretch your business capabilities into areas that aren’t necessary and hinder your growth.

Instead, identify exactly what your most successful services are with current clients, define your unique selling points, and run with them. That way, you can focus your attention on what really matters and deliver the best experiences to those that you work with.

  1. Get your data right!

Data still remains ‘the new oil’, offering invaluable insight into your employees, leads and clients alike. Analysing data can help to best understand how you can tailor your product or services better to suit their needs.

However, data (whether customer-focused, financial or employee information) is often stored across multiple systems for differing parts of the business. Sales teams use one lead generation tool, the hiring team uses another recruitment platform, and marketers favour content management systems. Where do you start to collate this information?

Begin with an internal audit – how many systems do you use, and which are efficient in holding the correct data? You should limit the number of systems you use to be able to pinpoint useful data quickly and easily. This planning will also identify any gaps in where you need to hire to adapt to scale.

  1. Hire across the business

When you know exactly where you need extra hands, get hiring!

A growing business not only needs new entry level candidates to handle the bread-and-butter services that define you, but also more experienced leaders with topic expertise that can take your renown to new levels. Particularly when it comes to content marketing for lead generation. Many tend to outsource creative roles such as this in B2B –

84% of companies that outsource talent see content creation as the most useful marketing tool. So long as the data and processes outlined above can work for freelancers or outsourced workers.

Recruitment can either take place internally or through partnering with third-party hiring agencies; whatever is the most flexible and scalable solution to attract the right people for your business.

  1. Integrate helpful tools

We get it, marketing or sales stacks can consist of many useful technologies to benefit your operations. But these internal tools can be siloed. Instead, it is best to limit the number of platforms you use and integrate them so that data is cross-referenced.

There are useful CRMs such as HubSpot or Salesforce to serve as databases for client and employee information, as well as handling and tracking marketing distribution and activity with great integrations available.

Communication is key not just for your third-party vendors, clients and outsourced workers, but also internally. Messaging platforms including Slack can integrate with other web services with ease so that everyone is on the same page.

  1. Document everything

Multiple platforms, new employees, and growing leads add up to a lot of moving parts. But when scaling, you should not forget what your company stands for.

Defining your purpose and internal company culture is incredibly important. Be transparent about your core values and expectations – the easiest way is through simple documentation that can be stored as a resource for current employees and new hires. All communication can also be handled through project management tools to bring everyone under one umbrella or via a complete agency management tool.

Employees will appreciate a company that is not only ambitious in scale, but one that values all those that work hard to get them to loftier heights.

Start scaling today

Scaling a business can be tricky, but help is at hand. For practical insights on how to grow, fill out your details onthe form below.

/by
, , ,

How could new technology improve your AEC firm’s daily processes?

This document is designed to help AEC firms think about how they can use emerging technology to transform their processes. You’ll see that each section has a list of questions and prompts to help you brainstorm, as well space to note ideas and doodle.

Fill out your details below to download the prompter

/by
, , , , ,

[Infographic] Deltek Clarity Architecture and Engineering Industry Study 2022

For the last 43 years, Deltek has conducted an annual survey of firms in the Architecture & Engineering industry to identify key performance indicators, market conditions and industry trends. The Study is developed in collaboration with industry organizations.

More than 540 firms participated in the Study, representing a broad cross-section of businesses within the Architecture and Engineering industry in North America.

The online survey was developed in partnership with CMG Consulting and conducted between February and March 2022, with financial metrics captured covering 2021 financial performance. The 43rd Annual Deltek Clarity Architecture & Engineering Study includes data from a variety of firms from all sizes and geographies across the United States and Canada

Fill out the form below to download the Report

If you would like to find out how Silversoft could assist your firm to improve on any of your internal systems and processes to be in line with industry standards, please click this link to schedule a call.

/by
, , ,

5 Sustainable engineering projects to inspire your firm to go green

Engineering firms should, by their very nature, be interested in sustainability. After all, their objective is to solve problems and make things function in a better way, and right now our world is in dire need of solutions for global climate change, dealing with plastic waste and finding new sources of sustainable energy.

If this is interesting to your firm but you’re not sure how you could contribute or what kind of projects you should look out for, maybe this article will help you. We have rounded up some of the most interesting sustainable engineering projects from around the world.

Dell Technologies harvests & recycles plastics from oceans

Dell has created a new supply chain that recovers ocean-bound plastics, putting them back into its packaging instead of letting them wash out to sea. The company says it works with suppliers to collect, process and mix plastics with other recycled material to create molded trays used for packaging select products. The trays are made from 50% ocean-bound plastic and 50% recycled HDPE plastic, using no virgin materials.

Learn more about Dell’s sustainability projects here.

Anne Wrobetz is an adjunct instructor in CU Boulder’s Engineering Management Program, and shared her insights on this project in a recent article, saying, “It’s positive for Dell. They’ve had to make this initial upfront investment but over the long run they are saving a lot of money and they are becoming recognised as an industry leader in the field of sustainable business. They are making all of this information available to other companies in an effort to get them to also start thinking about where their plastics come from and how they can change their supply chain and really leverage these new ideas. It sets them apart from their competitors and gives them a competitive advantage.”

Newlight creates AirCarbon sustainable plastic

AirCarbon was developed by Newlight Technologies. They use natural ocean microorganisms to make PHB from air and greenhouse gas. Unlike synthetic materials, the AirCarbon molecule is a molecule made throughout nature, and can be re-consumed by natural microorganisms like leaves or twigs, enabling life to restore itself.

Recently featured on CNN, AirCarbon has won many awards for its innovative sustainability. It’s a verified carbon-negative material, meaning every step of its production and use is fully green and sustainable. Because it is not made from oil like other plastics, it is also a cost-effective alternative to other synthetic materials.

Learn more about AirCarbon here.

EONEF brings electricity to disaster zones

Developed by French start-up EONEF, Zéphyr is a photovoltaic balloon and eco-friendly generator . The autonomous aerial platform takes the form of a helium balloon.

It was created to help emergency services deploy telecommunications networks in under an hour when dealing with crises and emergencies, providing field teams with live data using a fixed-point camera.

It’s also used for scientific missions including measuring air quality and observing wildlife, and for extended protection of sensitive sites.

Learn more about Zéphyr here.

The Svart Hotel: the world’s first energy-positive hotel

The Svart Hotel in northern Norway will be the first energy positive hotel in the world.

Set to open in 2022, Svart is “Inspired by local coastal building traditions and nature, dissolving the boundary between land and water. We aim to transform how we look at hotels and introduce hotels’ future through a sustainable, innovative approach to design, technology, construction, operation and guest journey.”

Designed by architects Snøhetta and engineering consultants Asplan Vaak, this hotel aims to create more energy than it uses. With an annual energy consumption that is expected to be 85% lower than other hotels, it will harvest enough solar power to cover all on-site energy needs, including the energy required for construction.

Learn more about the Svart hotel here.

Pavegen Systems uses steps to generate energy

Pavegen’s award-winning smart street pathway converts the kinetic energy of people’s footsteps into electrical energy and data. One footstep produces enough energy to light an LED light bulb for approximately 20 seconds.

The company aims to build awareness and help create highly engaging consumer experiences, while educating and inspiring stakeholders in the hope that, eventually, footsteps could power whole cities.

Learn more about Pavegen here.

Baby steps towards sustainability

As inspiring as these sustainable engineering projects are, they require big budgets and ambitious clients. Sometimes the best way to become more sustainable is through a series of smaller changes to the way we run our offices and source materials.

To help you think about how your firm can “go green” we’ve created a handy summary for you to download.

/by
, , , ,

[Infographic] Deltek Clarity: Architecture and Engineering Industry Study 2022

For the last 43 years, Deltek has conducted an annual survey of firms in the Architecture & Engineering industry to identify key performance indicators, market conditions and industry trends. The Study is developed in collaboration with industry organizations.

More than 540 firms participated in the Study, representing a broad cross-section of businesses within the Architecture and Engineering industry in North America.

The online survey was developed in partnership with CMG Consulting and conducted between February and March 2022, with financial metrics captured covering 2021 financial performance. The 43rd Annual Deltek Clarity Architecture & Engineering Study includes data from a variety of firms from all sizes and geographies across the United States and Canada

Fill out the form below to download the Report

If you would like to find out how Silversoft could assist your firm to improve on any of your internal systems and processes to be in line with industry standards, please click this link to schedule a call.

/by
, , ,

Transform your engineering firm with these 5 emerging technologies

Transform your engineering firm with these 5 emerging technologies

There’s a skills crisis looming that is not a product of poor training, but rather a symptom of the relentless march of technological innovation. 

Half of the business leaders who responded to the 2019 PWC Fourth Industrial Revolution survey expressed a concern about future job losses – with 55 percent of respondents saying that the biggest impact of this skills shortage on business is the “inability to innovate effectively.”

The impact of technological advancement is shortening the shelf-life of existing employee skills. While this reality can be disturbing, the emerging technologies driving these skills shortage are exciting and demand that engineering firms adopt a new mindset to embrace these changes.

These technologies also have the power to transform the current workplace into the digital offices of tomorrow that encourage levels of collaboration that we have never experienced before. This approach can also unlock new workstyles that can solve the biggest problems we face today.

These five emerging technologies are particularly beneficial in the engineering space:

  • Digital twins

Virtual models can be used to adapt or construct buildings and even whole urban infrastructures and cities to arrive at unique solutions. Digital twins are an important tool to reshape our urban spaces to drive down carbon emissions, while boosting economic efficiency.

Ernst and Young also reported digital twins can reduce carbon emissions in urban areas by between 50 to 100 percent, reduce operating costs for building asset owners by 35 percent and boost productivity by 20 percent.

Six steps to create a digital twin:

  • Equip your project/asset with IoT sensors to measure inputs and outputs
  • Connect the IoT sensors to a digital platform
  • Organise the collected data and prepare data sets for analysis 
  • Visualise the data with iterative models
  • Transfer to a 3D model or overview dashboard to inform decision making
  • Implement this data-guided decision in the physical world
  • Edge computing

Processing data close to the source and only sending the results to the cloud cuts down on storage costs and speeds up processes. Centralised cloud computing has yielded amazing products, including unlimited data storage and connected apps, but the security risks and a reliance on data connectivity has limited its use in high-security environments.

Edge computing provides shorter response times, lower bandwidth costs, and more robust data safety and privacy protection than cloud computing. 

What is edge computing? It moves compute power to the edge of where your local network meets the internet. This infrastructure is more robust and reliable and keeps data costs low by only utilising the connection when offloading the processed data to external storage.

Networking speed is also improved through local and peer-to-peer communication, which is a central component of the Internet of Things. In the future all the machine-to-machine communication that underpins autonomous driving will demonstrate the full potential of edge computing.   

 

  • Blockchain 

Cryptographic distributed ledgers create a digital log with a permanent record and can track assets. With blockchain contracts are embedded in digital code and stored in transparent, shared databases, where they are protected from deletion, tampering, and revision. 

With an internal blockchain every agreement, every process, every task, and every payment would have a digital record and signature that could be identified, validated, stored, and shared. Individuals, organisations, machines, and algorithms can freely transact and interact with one another with little friction.

Three important advantages of an internal blockchain: 

  • Confidentiality can be incorporated in a private blockchain by encrypting the data on a chain.
  • Multichain tokenisation allows you to anchor the value of a transaction and you can link multiple chains 
  • Private blockchain can provide authenticated and notarised messaging services. 


  • Artificial Intelligence

AI can process large data sets in a short time and, through machine learning techniques, automate certain processes. The complementary nature of on-device machine learning and edge computing means that future IoT systems can operate semi-autonomously within defined parameters, freeing up human capital and compute power for other tasks. 

Applying AI to design can also speed up that phase of the work without resorting to copying and pasting templates. AI can dynamically place standard objects/features and suggest alterations in response to data from a digital twin.

 

  • Augmented Reality

The ability to overlay additional data or information on top of the real world will help visualise data in new and innovative ways. Technically digital twins can be described as augmented reality because the models you can design are tied to a real-world object. 

The metaverse may be the hot topic now but, outside of communications and entertainment applications, the concept of VR in the engineering workspace is not ideal. AR on the other hand combines all the strengths of VR, but doesn’t require you to depart from the meat space.

Ensure your firm is equipped to support innovation projects

While your firm is enhancing its solutions and gearing towards future-focused engineering solutions, it needs in-house software, including for project management, that supports this kind of innovation and forward thinking.

This workbook contains questions and prompts to help you brainstorm how you can use emerging tech to transform your processes. 

Download our innovation prompter by filling out the form below: 

 

 

/by
, , ,

How to overcome common engineering project management hurdles

All projects have their challenges and that will never change, but the sense of dread and déjà vu when a carefully executed plan goes off the rails can (and should) be avoided. If you find your team facing the same hurdles repeatedly, it might be because you have inefficiencies baked into your engineering workflow and that there’s a problem that needs to be solved.

Fortunately, with the right tools, people and processes in place, you can overcome these problems.

Here’s a look at six common project management challenges that tend to crop up in engineering firms and how you can tackle them:

  1. Complex collaboration

The engineering phase is a living, interdependent ecosystem of contractors and consultants who all need to prepare a path to success across multiple disciplines. One late drawing or overlooked amendment can cause major delays and have unexpected consequences.

Solution: Gain visibility into these dependencies early and communicate them to all stakeholders by deploying a single system that shares regular progress reports with all parties.

 

  1. Non-standard documents

Contractors all have their own unique processes and cultures, often operating on incompatible systems. Shared administrative culture can resolve many problems, and simply creating document templates can reduce the need for rework. They can be re-used across multiple projects and will improve the consistency of reporting.

Solution: Establish a database of document templates and distribute them to all contractors or firms working on the project.

 

  1. Poor auditing

Does your firm perform a thorough delay analysis every time a project is bottlenecked? If not, this might be part of the problem. A comprehensive document history and audit trail creates a culture of accountability and transparency. These audit trails can also be reviewed to streamline the project management process in future.

Solution: Establish a consistent paper trail for every decision and progress update. Project management software allows you to capture these paper trails digitally with a detailed timeline that cannot be tampered with.

 

  1. Missed cost savings opportunities

Open communication allows for the exchange of ideas that could unlock potential cost-saving opportunities. If everyone has the same overview of the project, then they can use their experience to suggest alternative methods or materials to complete a task more efficiently. A key component of this communication is having a team that is working from the same, correct information in real time.

Solution: A central, digital project plan (with the relevant details for each stakeholder) gives everyone an up-to-date view of the latest project details and progress, making it easier to spot cost saving opportunities.

 

  1. Poor relationship management

Establishing a clear communication strategy for each stage of the project is crucial to creating an efficient working relationship with project collaborators and, importantly, with your clients. That communications strategy is in place to serve relevant information to the intended recipient when they need it.

Solution: Give your client an overview of the project status and regular updates on any possible opportunities. A system that allows you to create a custom dashboard can speed up client approvals by giving them a space to submit job requests and view the project status.

 

  1. Unproductive conflict

The occasional dose of workplace tension often proves that those involved are passionate about doing the best job possible. Having a central open communications channel where stakeholders and collaborators can share ideas and voice their grievances enables you to channel that passion into a constructive debate or discourse, having a positive effect on the project.

Solution: Establish a project-specific communications channel alongside the project management process that is hierarchy free and allows the exchange of ideas.

 

The above challenges are nearly universal across engineering projects and can even manifest within well-functioning teams. A digital project management platform like Deltek Vantagepoint is a valuable resource to help keep the project management train on the rails.

Download this free guide to see all the ways that Deltek Vantagepoint can unlock productivity in your workflow.

/by