This article explores five project delivery methods—Design/Bid/Build, Construction Management at Risk, Design/Build at Risk, Design/Build Not-at-Risk, and Integrated Project Delivery—highlighting pros, cons, and case studies. Choosing the right method depends on scope, budget, complexity, and client needs. Success requires clear communication, risk management, performance metrics, and leveraging tools like BQE CORE.

This article explores how AI tools like Midjourney are reshaping architectural design. In seconds, prompts can generate conceptual renderings that once required hours of sketching. While current outputs lack refinement, rapid advances suggest AI could soon create editable BIM models. Architects risk irrelevance unless they adapt, evolve, and integrate AI-driven workflows.

This AI-written article, crafted in Steven Burns’ voice, explores how artificial intelligence will reshape architecture and engineering. It highlights tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney that automate design, enhance visualization, and improve collaboration. The piece examines AI’s impact on building performance, construction, and education while addressing ethical issues such as bias, privacy, accountability, and job displacement.

This article explains how cloud-based business management software helps architecture firms improve efficiency, collaboration, and profitability. It highlights real-time financial insight, streamlined project management, scalability, and strong data security while offering guidance on choosing the right platform—focusing on customization, integration, usability, vendor reliability, support, and long-term return on investment.

This article explains how architects can shift from selling services by price to selling based on value. It outlines strategies such as showcasing design expertise, promoting sustainability, emphasizing project management, leveraging technology, personalizing the client experience, highlighting community impact, and building long-term partnerships. The key is demonstrating tangible, differentiated value that aligns with client goals and fosters trust.

This reflective article shares lessons learned from a lifetime in architecture and business. It urges young professionals to stand out, seek mentors, and work only for firms they admire. It explores the leap into starting a practice—choosing partners wisely, managing finances prudently, being transparent, delegating, and maintaining ethics. Through personal stories and humor, it emphasizes hard work, integrity, selectivity, and balance between professional ambition and personal well-being.

Nine tactics to raise productivity in AE firms: control email, hold daily stand-ups, over-communicate, e-invoice on staggered cycles, budget and allocate projects, go mobile-first, document and reevaluate, automate workflows, and invest in industry software. Plan at every level so teams collaborate better, cash flow stabilizes, and projects finish on time.

This piece distills lessons from visiting hundreds of firms into three fatal flaws: treating poverty as virtue and ducking money conversations, running the studio with elegant design but chaotic business systems, and hiding project financials from staff. The cures are simple: talk openly about fees, professionalize operations, and practice transparent sharing to build accountability and repeat work.

This article outlines practical steps for strengthening financial management in small architecture firms. It covers choosing reliable accounting and payroll systems, using project management software for efficiency, and creating a clear marketing plan with defined budgets and differentiators. It also stresses charging fair fees, avoiding uncompensated services, and capturing reimbursable expenses with proper markups. The takeaway: architects must treat financial systems and contracts with the same precision they give to design, ensuring profitability and long-term stability.

This article explains how small architecture firms can build a financial foundation using clear terminology and simple calculations. It outlines how to create a profit plan by estimating expenses, setting a profit goal, and defining a net revenue target. Key concepts include the efficiency ratio, direct salary expense, and billing rate multipliers that ensure profitability. By understanding how to link staff performance, billable time, and fees, firms can set realistic revenue goals and maintain sustainable profit margins through informed financial management.

This article opens a multi-part series on financial management for architects, stressing that great design alone doesn’t make a firm successful—sound business practices do. It argues that profitability is essential, not optional, and that architects must understand budgeting, revenue, and cash flow to sustain both their firms and employees. The piece encourages architects to see their firm as a “work family,” requiring discipline, financial literacy, and the same rigor they apply to design. It concludes by introducing future installments focused on terminology, examples, and practical financial systems for firm management.

This article outlines seven best practices for managing remote architecture and engineering teams effectively. It highlights the importance of operating fully in the cloud, tracking productivity, maintaining frequent communication, and holding recurring meetings. It also stresses document collaboration, cloud-based project management, and establishing a clear remote work policy manual. Together, these practices help firms stay connected, accountable, and efficient in a distributed work environment.