AEC Sustainable Design: Learn How to Win More Bids with a Green Design Strategy

For AEC firms, what’s the impact of a sustainable design strategy?

Many AEC firms have found that a sustainable design strategy can offer an excellent opportunity for competitive differentiation to help them win more bids. What should you consider when implementing a design for sustainability strategy to ensure you reap similar benefits?

Based on a survey of 207 architectural firms, this research study examines design trends in sustainability, goals for sustainability, and the benefits companies achieve. The research also reveals four best practices for implementing a sustainable design strategy.

Please enjoy the summary* below. For the full research, please visit our sponsor Graphisoft (registration required).

Table of Contents

• Executive Summary
• Improve Bid Win Rate with Higher Client Satisfaction
• What’s Driving Sustainability
• Sustainability Goals
• Benefits of Sustainable Design
• Identifying Top Performers
• Implementing a Design for Sustainability Strategy
• 1. When should you assess sustainability?
• 2. What should be evaluated to support sustainability?
• 3. Who should be responsible for sustainability?
• 4. What software technology should you use?
• Recommendations
• About the Research
• Appendix: Sustainability Resources
• Acknowledgments

Executive Summary

Win More Bids

While schedule and cost are critical factors in a winning bid, Top Performing companies find that their ability to offer more value beyond these gives them a competitive advantage. Part of this value includes more sustainable designs. In fact, sustainability factors such as green design, lowering a building’s energy costs, and the ability to balance cost and sustainability are among the top factors that increase client satisfaction. Consequently, these factors can help a company boost its reputation and earn more repeat business.

Sustainability Drivers

Sustainability is becoming increasingly crucial for AEC. Many factors drive firms to design for sustainability, but the biggest ones include regulatory and owner requirements and the opportunity to give them a competitive advantage to win more bids. Firms also consider sustainable design to lower building costs, differentiate their brand, and increase aesthetic appeal with green design.

Further, 78% of AEC companies report that sustainability is essential for some or all of their projects. Interestingly, while sustainability requirements have grown over the last five years, an overwhelming 93% expect requirements will continue to increase over the next five years.

Top Sustainability Goals

Top goals for sustainable design include supporting net zero/lower emissions, using renewable energy sources, and reducing energy consumption. However, the research identified several challenges that make it harder to design for sustainability. At the same time, respondents reported numerous benefits of overcoming these challenges and implementing a successful sustainability strategy.

The research studied the approaches of Top Performing companies to identify best practices to meet their sustainability goals. These best practices address four questions:

1. When should you assess sustainability?
2. What should be evaluated to support sustainability?
3. Who should be responsible for sustainability?
4. What software technology should you use?

What’s Driving Sustainability

Sustainability Drivers

When comparing current sustainability drivers to what they were five years ago, what’s most striking is that all drivers have increased. The biggest drivers come from requirements, either due to regulations or owners.However, the most significant change over the last five years is that green design is now often viewed as a competitive advantage in winning bids. This explains why it’s an important factor for Top Performers’ success. Another significant change is that sustainability is part of a strategy to differentiate the company brand. It also helps lower energy and utility costs, another factor in increasing client satisfaction. Finally, many like the look of a green design, finding the aesthetics visually pleasing, further reinforcing the impact of sustainable design on client satisfaction.

Renovations

Renovations and new construction often have different goals, which are reflected in the sustainability drivers. For renovations, owner’s requirements are the most significant driver (72% compared to 52% of those doing new

Identifying Top Performers

How Top Performers Were Defined

To define Top Performers, Tech-Clarity identified the top 25% of companies that outperform their competitors in metrics that indicate business success. These metrics were:

• Revenue growth over the last 24 months
• Profit margin expansion over the previous 24 months
• On-time design delivery
• Revenue from repeat clients
• Achieving a higher bid-win rate

Top Performers exceed their competitors in these metrics, indicating more business success. To identify best practices, we focused on what Top Performers do differently compared to Others to understand the factors contributing to their success.

Top Performers’ Advantage

Much of what Top Performers do leads to more effective practices (see table). They are more effective at lowering their clients’ operational costs, staying on budget, and designing efficiently. Interestingly, the most significant difference between Top Performers and Others is that Top Performers are 2.1 times more likely to be effective at sustainable design. This shows that they are very effective at overcoming the time and cost challenges associated with designing for sustainability and consequently, are more successful at lowering their clients’ energy costs. The result is happier clients who are more likely to return with repeat business.

Let’s look at what Top Performers do to achieve better results.

Recommendations

*This summary is an abbreviated version of the ebook and does not contain the full content. For the full report, please visit our sponsor Graphisoft.

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