TZL 1578 (web)

OPINION

Inefficiencies are costing you

Why most architecture and engineering firms overspend on design software and underinvest where it matters.

M ost architecture and engineering firms invest heavily in design software but neglect business management tools, often at the cost of efficiency and profitability. I learned this lesson firsthand when I co-founded my own firm in 2013 with a couple of partners. We left larger firms because we wanted to have more control over the work we did and flex our design muscles. We started working from our living rooms with laptops, a subscription to Revit LT, and a dream. We slowly started to bring in work and grow the team.

Lucas Gray

Although we were confident in our ability to design and deliver projects for our clients, we were lacking in business knowledge, underinvested in planning for growth, and neglected building systems and processes as we focused on the creative work. We grew our tech stack by adopting more design tools from SketchUp and Revit to Adobe CC, Bluebeam, and more. Yet the biggest weakness of the business wasn’t design. It was making sure the team was billable and efficient, that we hit deadlines and kept each project on budget. The more tools we adopted the worse this got as our design workflow jumped between

software tools and often necessitated duplicating work. Instead of a streamlined, repeatable, and efficient design process, we made things up as we went and each project was executed differently. At the same time, with the goal of saving money, we resisted investing in software that helped with managing the business. We used QuickBooks Online for financial management and then folders full of spreadsheets that we custom built for various aspects of the business. Our thinking at the time was to save money with “free” spreadsheets. We felt we were already spending too much on software and didn’t want to increase our budget. We didn’t

THE ZWEIG LETTER MARCH 24, 2025, ISSUE 1578

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