C+S August 2021 Vol. 7 Issue 8

AEC Industry

Once again, it is one of my favorite times of year. We are seeing some trends from the Best Firms To Work For Survey . This gives us a good pulse of how employees are feeling within the industry. We are getting to see some impressive growth from our Hot Firm Award Winners. The marketing campaigns that won our Marketing Excellence Awards were first class and continue to impress our panel of judges. Our Rising Stars in the AEC Industry continues to grow and it is getting more and more difficult to select from the outstanding nominations. All of our award winners deserve to be and will be celebrated. We are very excited to bring back the in-person Elevate AEC conference again this year where we will get to host the huge Awards Ceremony and Black Tie Gala that has become so iconic. Let’s take a quick look at some of what we will be celebrating this year. Numbers overall are up in 2021 when compared to 2020. Not only are they up across the board, but they are up significantly as well. 2021 saw the largest year-over-year increase in our data set dating back to 2018. This is a very good sign. Numbers in 2020 decreased across the board on overage as you would expect to happen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did we see scores rebound from the 2020 dip, they are above where we saw them in 2019. This to me shows that firms are emerging from the strange days of working through the pandemic stronger and in better position than they were before the pandemic. By no means do we want working through a pandemic to be the new normal, but hopefully firms have been able to carry some of the positive adjustments they had to make in 2020 to keep improving and I believe this is evidence of firms doing just that.

From the end of Fiscal year 2017 to the end of FY 2020, the average Hot Firm grew by $29.7 million. They also grew by an average of 85 percent over that same time period. Both of these are incredible growth numbers especially given the challenges that 2020 produced. This is great news. It shows that there is real growth going on in the industry, helping to create and retain good, high paying jobs. This is something we can all celebrate right now. We also saw a very strong group of Rising Stars nominees but especially winners. We will share a little bit more about each one below, but this group really stood out. They all have very unique skill sets and backgrounds. They are technical and non-technical professionals, from all over the United States and outside of it. It is getting really tough to select our Rising Stars in the AEC Industry , but this group deserves to be celebrated for all they have already accomplished.

KYLE AHERN is the Awards Manager at Zweig Group. He can be reached at kahern@zweiggroup.com.

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july 2021

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