Fresh Projects is a UK-based software platform designed for architects, engineers, and other built-environment professionals to manage financial aspects of their projects. It helps teams track fees, timesheets, expenses, billing, and overall profitability to keep projects on budget and profitable. The platform also centralises project data, streamlines administrative tasks, and offers mobile app support for easy access and updates.
1a Colinette Road
London
SW15 6QG
© 2026 Fresh Projects
Product
Fresh Projects is a UK-based software platform designed for architects, engineers, and other built-environment professionals to manage financial aspects of their projects. It helps teams track fees, timesheets, expenses, billing, and overall profitability to keep projects on budget and profitable. The platform also centralises project data, streamlines administrative tasks, and offers mobile app support for easy access and updates.
1a Colinette Road
London
SW15 6QG
© 2026 Fresh Projects
Product
How A&E Firms Win Better Projects
How A&E Firms Win Better Projects
How A&E Firms Win Better Projects
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For most 50–100 person architecture and engineering practices, growth doesn’t come from winning more work.
It comes from winning the right work.
Earlier in my career, I worked in the finance team of a large AEC firm. We had more than twenty people running accounting and reporting alone. Despite that scale, the practices that performed best didn’t rely on complex systems or heroic effort. They focused on three fundamentals:
Winning the right jobs
Making sure project fees covered delivery costs
Invoicing early and collecting debt quickly
This article focuses on the first, because if you get this wrong, the rest rarely works.
Why winning the right jobs matters in larger A&E firms
Not all projects are created equal. And as practices grow beyond 50 staff, this becomes harder to manage.
Different offices pursue different opportunities.
Partners have different views on what “good work” looks like.
Bid decisions are often made on instinct, not evidence.
The result is familiar:
Senior time spent chasing low-quality opportunities
Projects that look attractive on paper but underperform financially
Little visibility of what types of work actually convert and make money
Winning more of the right jobs starts with better visibility and discipline in your sales pipeline.
What good pipeline management looks like in a 50–100 person practice
A pipeline management system gives leadership teams a clear, shared view of future work, without spreadsheets or fragmented reports.
At a minimum, every architecture or engineering practice pipeline should:
Capture all potential work
Every lead and opportunity should sit in one place, not in inboxes or individual spreadsheets.
Track the information that actually matters
For each lead or opportunity, capture:
Estimated fee
Expected start date
Likely project duration
Probability of winning
This is the foundation of reliable architecture fee forecasting.
Use clear, agreed pipeline stages
Stages should reflect how your firm works, for example:
Prospect
Engaged
Proposal sent
Probable
Won
The key is consistency across offices and teams.
Define the next action
Every opportunity should have a clear next step, whether that’s a follow-up call, scope clarification or internal review.
Classify opportunities to reveal patterns
Classification is where insight starts to emerge. Common categories include:
Project size
Client type (private, public, developer)
Project type (commercial, healthcare, residential)
Lead owner
Lead source
Over time, this shows which work your firm is actually good at winning and which work drains time and margin.
Managing leads vs opportunities effectively
In larger A&E firms, not every enquiry deserves the same attention.
Leads
Leads are lightweight placeholders. They exist to ensure opportunities aren’t forgotten, not to justify heavy investment of time.
Before a lead becomes an opportunity, it should be qualified.
Opportunities
Opportunities are qualified, realistic prospects.
At this stage, firms should:
Prepare an outline project budget
Track bid time and pursuit costs
Carry those costs through into project profitability analysis if the job is won
This level of discipline prevents teams from overspending on bids that were never right for the practice.
How to qualify the right projects (the go / no-go process)
Before committing meaningful time, senior teams should be able to answer five questions:
Is the client right for us?
Credit checks, references, or simply past experience.Is the scope clear?
Just as important as what you will do is what you won’t.Can we realistically win?
Do we have the right experience and competitive position?What will it cost to deliver?
A simple, honest delivery budget.Does the fee support a healthy margin?
If not, the decision should be clear.
This process protects both profitability and senior capacity.
Using pipeline data to improve profitability
Once opportunities are consistently classified, patterns emerge quickly:
Certain project types convert more reliably
Mid-sized fees may outperform smaller ones due to reduced competition
Some team members close work more effectively than others
Certain lead sources consistently underperform
This insight allows leadership teams to:
Disqualify poor-fit opportunities earlier
Focus energy on the work most likely to convert
Improve profitability visibility across the firm
Forecasting future income with confidence
A well-managed pipeline enables reliable architecture sales forecasting.
Because every opportunity has:
A fee value
A probability
A start date
Practices can build a weighted fee forecast that leadership teams trust.
For example:
A £100k fee at 10% probability contributes £10k
A £20k fee at 75% probability contributes £15k
At scale, this creates a clear, forward-looking view of future income, essential for resourcing, hiring and cash flow planning.
How Fresh Projects helps firms win the right work
Fresh Projects is built specifically for architecture and engineering practices.
It makes pipeline management:
Easy to adopt across teams
Simple to maintain consistently
Directly connected to project budgets, resourcing and forecasting
Instead of isolated spreadsheets or complex ERPs, firms get clear insight into what work is coming, what’s worth pursuing, and what will actually be profitable.
Winning the right jobs is the first step towards predictable, confident practice performance.
For most 50–100 person architecture and engineering practices, growth doesn’t come from winning more work.
It comes from winning the right work.
Earlier in my career, I worked in the finance team of a large AEC firm. We had more than twenty people running accounting and reporting alone. Despite that scale, the practices that performed best didn’t rely on complex systems or heroic effort. They focused on three fundamentals:
Winning the right jobs
Making sure project fees covered delivery costs
Invoicing early and collecting debt quickly
This article focuses on the first, because if you get this wrong, the rest rarely works.
Why winning the right jobs matters in larger A&E firms
Not all projects are created equal. And as practices grow beyond 50 staff, this becomes harder to manage.
Different offices pursue different opportunities.
Partners have different views on what “good work” looks like.
Bid decisions are often made on instinct, not evidence.
The result is familiar:
Senior time spent chasing low-quality opportunities
Projects that look attractive on paper but underperform financially
Little visibility of what types of work actually convert and make money
Winning more of the right jobs starts with better visibility and discipline in your sales pipeline.
What good pipeline management looks like in a 50–100 person practice
A pipeline management system gives leadership teams a clear, shared view of future work, without spreadsheets or fragmented reports.
At a minimum, every architecture or engineering practice pipeline should:
Capture all potential work
Every lead and opportunity should sit in one place, not in inboxes or individual spreadsheets.
Track the information that actually matters
For each lead or opportunity, capture:
Estimated fee
Expected start date
Likely project duration
Probability of winning
This is the foundation of reliable architecture fee forecasting.
Use clear, agreed pipeline stages
Stages should reflect how your firm works, for example:
Prospect
Engaged
Proposal sent
Probable
Won
The key is consistency across offices and teams.
Define the next action
Every opportunity should have a clear next step, whether that’s a follow-up call, scope clarification or internal review.
Classify opportunities to reveal patterns
Classification is where insight starts to emerge. Common categories include:
Project size
Client type (private, public, developer)
Project type (commercial, healthcare, residential)
Lead owner
Lead source
Over time, this shows which work your firm is actually good at winning and which work drains time and margin.
Managing leads vs opportunities effectively
In larger A&E firms, not every enquiry deserves the same attention.
Leads
Leads are lightweight placeholders. They exist to ensure opportunities aren’t forgotten, not to justify heavy investment of time.
Before a lead becomes an opportunity, it should be qualified.
Opportunities
Opportunities are qualified, realistic prospects.
At this stage, firms should:
Prepare an outline project budget
Track bid time and pursuit costs
Carry those costs through into project profitability analysis if the job is won
This level of discipline prevents teams from overspending on bids that were never right for the practice.
How to qualify the right projects (the go / no-go process)
Before committing meaningful time, senior teams should be able to answer five questions:
Is the client right for us?
Credit checks, references, or simply past experience.Is the scope clear?
Just as important as what you will do is what you won’t.Can we realistically win?
Do we have the right experience and competitive position?What will it cost to deliver?
A simple, honest delivery budget.Does the fee support a healthy margin?
If not, the decision should be clear.
This process protects both profitability and senior capacity.
Using pipeline data to improve profitability
Once opportunities are consistently classified, patterns emerge quickly:
Certain project types convert more reliably
Mid-sized fees may outperform smaller ones due to reduced competition
Some team members close work more effectively than others
Certain lead sources consistently underperform
This insight allows leadership teams to:
Disqualify poor-fit opportunities earlier
Focus energy on the work most likely to convert
Improve profitability visibility across the firm
Forecasting future income with confidence
A well-managed pipeline enables reliable architecture sales forecasting.
Because every opportunity has:
A fee value
A probability
A start date
Practices can build a weighted fee forecast that leadership teams trust.
For example:
A £100k fee at 10% probability contributes £10k
A £20k fee at 75% probability contributes £15k
At scale, this creates a clear, forward-looking view of future income, essential for resourcing, hiring and cash flow planning.
How Fresh Projects helps firms win the right work
Fresh Projects is built specifically for architecture and engineering practices.
It makes pipeline management:
Easy to adopt across teams
Simple to maintain consistently
Directly connected to project budgets, resourcing and forecasting
Instead of isolated spreadsheets or complex ERPs, firms get clear insight into what work is coming, what’s worth pursuing, and what will actually be profitable.
Winning the right jobs is the first step towards predictable, confident practice performance.
Published:
Published:
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Fresh Projects is a UK-based software platform designed for architects, engineers, and other built-environment professionals to manage financial aspects of their projects. It helps teams track fees, timesheets, expenses, billing, and overall profitability to keep projects on budget and profitable. The platform also centralises project data, streamlines administrative tasks, and offers mobile app support for easy access and updates.
1a Colinette Road
London
SW15 6QG
© 2026 Fresh Projects
Product
