Hey, it’s Collin. Welcome to Engineering Echelons, a newsletter full of ideas and insights to help engineers excel at management.

Here’s what I’ve got for you this week.

• New and noteworthy news

• Something to consider

• Some insights to delve into

• And more…

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Alright, let’s get into it.

Noteworthy Headlines

ENR 2025 Top 500 Design Firms (ENR)

Highlights:

• Kansas City metropolitan area once again leads with the most top twenty design firms, coming in with four total. From largest to smallest, those are Burns & McDonnell, HNTB, Black & Veatch, and Terracon.

• The KC-Omaha AEC corridor strengthens the midwest showing with six in the top twenty (same as first bullet point plus HDR and Kiewit).

Architecture Billings Downward Trajectory Continues (AIA)

Highlights:

• The Architecture Billings Index (ABI) recorded a score of 44.1, indicating many firms are still experiencing declining billings.

• September 2022 marked the end of the post-pandemic billings surge for architects. Since then, billings have declined 27 of the last 30 months, inquiries into new projects have dropped, and newly signed design contracts have seen a decline for an unprecedented 13 months straight.

Navigating Trade Policy Changes: Impacts on Construction (Dodge Construction Network)

Highlights:

• The Dodge Momentum Index—which tracks early planning for nonresidential projects under $500 million, excluding manufacturing and transportation—gained steady ground in 2024, typically signaling stronger construction activity by late 2025 or early 2026. However, rising uncertainty around tariffs may lead owners and developers to delay planning decisions, limiting how much of that momentum translates into actual spending in the near term.

• The median number of months it’s taking nonresidential projects (<$500M) to move from planning to start increased from 16 to 19 months in the first quarter of 2025 and that trend is likely to worsen throughout the rest of this year.

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Management Perspective

In the December 2005 edition of Business 2.0, Jim Collins shared a story that changed his life. While teaching at Stanford, Jim Gardner, an author and civic leader, was Jim Collins’ mentor. One day, Gardner said, “It occurs to me, Jim, that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don’t you invest more time being interested?”

I see this all the time—someone thinks that by sharing all of the cool things about themselves, others will be attracted to them. I’ve been guilty of it too.

It’s not a new concept. Dale Carnegie preached about it many decades ago in his famous book How to Win Friends and Influence People.

One place this is particularly prevalent is when professional services firms are marketing themselves for a project pursuit. They’ll show past projects, highlight the number of awards they’ve won, boast about their size and geographical reach, and so on. But a lot of times, the client is looking for someone who will pay them attention. Putting the focus on you and your company’s achievements signals that you deserve the attention, not the client.

It’s amazing how much more effective you can be by shifting the focus to the client by asking meaningful questions about their background, goals, challenges, and so on. Those questions oftentimes uncover insights into what the client is actually trying to achieve. And you can showcase your expertise subtly by asking further questions that shed more light on what they are looking for. Those deeper questions may even cause the client to consider a new perspective for approaching their goals, putting them on a path of discovery that feels self-affirming. Yet it was you who fostered this in the first place, so the client associates you with their feeling of empowerment.

Maybe you’ve noticed this in your own life. Are there some people you just feel smarter when around them?

As you may have guessed, the strategy of being interested rather than interesting requires genuineness. Anything else won’t cut it. People are highly attuned to that, especially when they can see a payoff for you.

When you are genuine, your behavior fosters trust and a long-term relationship. It may take longer to achieve, but the payoffs are greater.

Management Insights

Ed Catmull on the two parts of failure:

“There are two parts to any failure: There is the event itself, with all its attendant disappointment, confusion, and shame, and then there is our reaction to it. It is the second part that we control.”

—

Ray Dalio on using many different perspectives:

“Knowing that I could be painfully wrong and curiosity about why other smart people saw things differently prompted me to look at things through the eyes of others as well as my own. This allowed me to see many more dimensions than if I saw things through my own eyes.”

—

Chris Guillebeau on finding business opportunities:

“This is a sign of a good business opportunity: when lots of people are interested in something but have a hard time implementing it in their daily lives.”

Management Resource

AI is Enabling an Always-On Economy. Companies Need to Pick Up the Pace. (WSJ)

We all hear about how AI is changing the world. It’s automating a lot of processes and eliminating some positions that were previously held by humans. But one area that isn’t talked about a lot is AI and other technologies are extending the work day.

This article highlights different ways companies are getting more done during off-hours, which then allows them to cover more ground compared to their competitors.

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Looking forward to hearing from you. See you next time.

Collin

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