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TRANSACTIONS SIGNAL HILL EQUITY PARTNERS INVESTS IN LEADING ARCHITECTURE AND ENGINEERING SERVICES FIRM, KLUBER ARCHITECTS + ENGINEERS Signal Hill Equity Partners, a middle- market private equity firm that invests in AEC and essential service businesses, is partnering with Kluber Architects + Engineers to expand its national architecture, engineering, and design platform. Kluber will partner alongside two previously established Signal Hill investments, CSArch, a prominent AEC services provider to the education sector, and ZMM Architects, a trusted firm primarily serving education and municipal clients. Together, the partnership unites more than 160 professionals across nine offices delivering comprehensive AEC services to clients within the social infrastructure sectors throughout the Northeastern and Midwestern U.S.
Established in 1988, Kluber is an integrated, values-driven, architectural and engineering firm designing in the governmental, education, health services and private sectors. Kluber is led by Michael Kluber, president, Don Ware, vice president and secretary, Chris Hansen, vice president, Rachel Whelan, Clayton Haldeman, and Jeff Bruns. Each of Kluber’s leadership team members will continue to collectively lead the organization following the transaction and execute their long-term growth objectives. “We are thrilled about what this partnership means for our clients,” said Mike Kluber, president of Kluber Architects + Engineers. “While many firms talk about their national reach, Kluber has always believed that real expertise comes from truly understanding the
communities we serve. We’ve been serving our community for decades, have delivered powerful results, and our clients count on us. This partnership with an outstanding group of professionals allows us to keep doing what we do best, but with more resources behind us.” Ahmed Abdel-Saheb, managing director with Signal Hill, noted, “We are excited to partner with the Kluber team in what marks an important step in broadening the reach and capabilities of our A/E platform. Kluber brings decades of experience delivering innovative design solutions for municipalities, public safety, healthcare, and education clients across Illinois and the Midwest. We’re honored and look forward to supporting their team as we continue building a platform that delivers lasting impact nationwide.”
Then there is finance and accounting. Are they there just to report past numbers and offer no plan for how to make things better? I don’t think so. And are they relegated to managing the existing (flawed) ownership transition plan that probably won’t work, and negotiating with the firm’s bank over a quarter point interest rate adjustment that won’t make any material difference in the success of the firm? They shouldn’t be. They should instead be focused on how to facilitate the growth and profitability of the business. Their MISSION needs to be maintaining the capitalization of the firm and maximizing shareholder value, not just being robotic historians that give you all the numbers and get your tax returns filed. And IT – are they there just to be sure your hardware and software all works like it should and to guide you through conversions from Microsoft to Google or vice versa? That’s the way it works in most companies in this business. Instead, their MISSION should be driving efficiency throughout the entire operation and figuring out how to capture and store information that gives the company a strategic information advantage in the markets it serves. That should be a critical part of the company’s strategy to support growth and increase its value. And what about creating software products that could actually be revenue generators for the company? It’s been done before. How about turning your IT from a cost to a revenue generator? I could go on but I hope you get the idea. If you want these other functional areas in your business to be all that they can be, you need to stop thinking of them as “support roles.” Maybe if you can do that, you will be able to figure out what kind of people you really need to be leading these areas versus just following the playbook for non-differentiating mediocrity that could be holding back the success of your enterprise. Think about it. Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com.
MARK ZWEIG, from page 7
and shortening up the time to fill any role management deems needs filling as quickly as possible. And HR people have to stop embracing nonsense like once a year performance reviews (something management and employees alike hate, and that mean nothing), and instead train managers on how to tactfully deliver immediate feedback, good and bad, to the people who work for them. I can say the same thing about bureaucratic policies and practices around pay increases. If someone needs a raise, do it now. If they need four raises this year, do that, also. Bonus programs need an entire rethinking as well. Where did the idea come from that management’s job ends at deciding who gets the money and who doesn’t? Their real job is to get everyone performing at a high level, not just reward people differently. And why isn’t HR advocating for open-book management? Everyone who has ever done it knows it both builds trust for management and trains everyone in how the company makes or doesn’t make money, yet HR people barely make a whisper about it, ever. Or how about marketing? Is marketing’s job in an AEC firm just to support the architects and engineers and others who SELL work? I don’t think so. Marketing’s MISSION should be to create the situation where no one from the business ever has to make a sales call, and instead where all new clients reach out to the AEC firm for help because marketing has done its job. If you don’t think that’s possible, I beg to differ with you. It’s not going to be possible if marketing is defined strictly as a support job, however! Marketing needs to be constantly experimenting with new ways to educate the firm’s targeted client types so they will call when they have a need – LEADING the charge instead of following people (the engineers and architects) who may know how to sell but haven’t been trained in marketing at all. It’s all backward in the typical AEC firm!
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THE ZWEIG LETTER DECEMBER 1, 2025, ISSUE 1611
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