Jamie Claire Kiser [2:33] We are in a phase in the AEC industry and the economic cycle that has really set this space up for an insane amount of interest in transactions and in consolidation. There just are a lot of factors that all came together at the same time to create this feeding frenzy within the M&A market in our space.
Randy Wilburn [2:55] And so with this frenzy, I mean, even when you got into this industry was that like maybe 2014-2015 [cross-talking] . But you've seen some distinct differences between those early days and now. I mean, there's just been a lot that has happened.
Jamie Claire Kiser [3:17] It has changed. I mean, this sounds like hyperbole. But truly everything about the M&A space within AEC has changed since I've been here. Almost nothing is the same as it was from the kinds of frms that joined forces to the pacing of a deal and how long it takes to move forward to throwing out and governors on just best practices and things that have held steady with like 30 years of our data backing it up. This isn't just a generalization. This is the way that things traditionally were done, had been thrown completely out of the window. And it's a really interesting opportunity to, I guess it takes best practices from any space and applies them to our industry so that we can be better dealmakers. Randy Wilburn [3:59] I was looking at some statistics as I was reading some old articles from the Zweig Letter and there was one that was just talking about, and this was fairly recent when we went through the Zweig Group’s hot frm list. There were, I think 76 percent of the hot frms grew through M&A. And I saw that and I was like, wow, I can't believe how many people have actually, in my mind, dip their toe in the pool of mergers and acquisitions and grew that way. But then, when you start to think about all the other challenges that this industry is faced with, labor, organic growth, it's not as easy as it used to be. It almost makes sense that frms would have to look at this as an option for a way to grow and a way to continue to remain relevant in the verticals that they serve within this industry.
Jamie Claire Kiser [4:54] Absolutely, and with record backlog as well. It's not possible to just continue to hire one person at a time and to cycle through is just as insane demand for services too. It really is being driven by all facets of the market, from
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