Speaking Engagements

As an engineering firm grows it requires more staff, and leaders are called upon to manage not just multiple projects and many clients, but personnel issues, payroll, business management, and a host of business matters that most engineers did not study in school. The need for a more structured organization, short and long-term planning, and “principal-level” leaders also increases as the firm grows. In addition, the firm becomes a big part of the founders’ or key leaders’ net worth and owners need to receive a return on investment for their labor.
This session will help emerging leaders and principals connect the dots between project management, business management, and investment management. Your firm is an “investment” and we will show you the metrics that you need to understand to guide your investment successfully. This one-day session starts with business management fundamentals—an operator’s crash course on essential accounting, financial and business practices. After showing you how to manage the triggers of success in your firm, we will show how the firm’s financial success relates to investment success. Your firm’s strategy plays a significant role in this. Eventual exit strategies will also be reviewed so that by the end of the session you will have learned what is needed to maximize the financial success of your firm and the ability to recoup that investment by either transferring internally to the next tier of leaders, employing an ESOP, or selling externally. This information will be useful in pursuing your own mergers and acquisitions growth strategy with a focus on valuation, analyzing an engineering firm, and deal structures.