Strategy

Design a strategy for your firm that builds value

Your firm’s strategy is its roadmap to building and sustaining value. Good strategy will move you from where you are now to where you want to be. We believe that the best strategic plans are brief and easy to understand, communicate and remember. We work with your leadership team to assess your firm’s current situation, identify opportunities to enhance value, reach consensus on vital strategic goals, and prepare action plans for achieving them. We can help you monitor progress on your strategy and modify it if needed to address changed circumstances or new opportunities.

Performance

Improve your ability to deliver on operational and strategic goals

Fundamentally, your firm’s value is determined by what it is able to achieve over time. We take a holistic view of performance. When your firm is operating successfully in business development, project execution, employee satisfaction, risk management, accounting and support services, financial success is sure to follow. In the engineering business, it’s easy to be consumed by day-to-day demands. It takes discipline and resolve to set aside time to advance strategic actions that generate long term benefits. We can help you evaluate operational and strategic performance, identify high value areas ripe for improvement and work with your leadership team and managers to take effective actions to achieve desired results.

Risk

Manage uncertainties and threats to success

There are lots of things, good and bad, that affect business and that are beyond our control. And there are very few opportunities for reward that don’t require taking known downside risks. Risk management is all about taking preventative measures to reduce the probability and/or impact of an adverse event and having contingency plans in place to minimize the actual consequences of such an event. Effective risk management enhances value by limiting negative impacts on performance and reducing volatility. We can help you develop and implement measures to reduce risk and help mitigate the impact of liability claims and other adverse events when they occur.

Leadership

Build a sustainable high-performance leadership team

A high performance leadership team advances strategies, achieves goals and effectively manages risk. It’s all about people, how well they work together, trust and communication. Simple concepts we all understand, but often difficult to get right, to get everyone on the same page, pulling in the same direction. Our approach to all our services is to engage your leadership team and facilitate trust, respect, participation, accountability and teamwork. Value is enhanced by a motivated leadership team with a proven record of success, a solid second tier of up-and-coming leaders and a succession plan. Leadership and ownership are usually closely related in engineering firms. Ownership programs can drive or impede success and ownership transition is often a challenging issue for firms. We can help you develop individual leaders, increase the capabilities of your leadership team, and plan for leadership succession and ownership transition.

M&A

Maximize value, as a buyer or seller

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are often part of a firm’s strategic plan. A firm can be a buyer or seller, either way, the objective is to maximize value received. If you are a buyer, you want to maximize ROI to shareholders from the combined entities. If you are a seller, you want the purchase price to capture all the value and synergies your firm brings to the table. Successful transactions are the result of both parties reaching agreement on a purchase price with solid plan for maximizing value of the combined entity. However, a merger or acquisition is far from being finished upon completing the transaction. Integration of the two firms is a critical and often complex process involving significant change management and sensitivity to people’s fears and concerns. We can help you through the entire M&A; process, from identifying compatible target firms to integration.