How AEC firms and professionals can turn the SMPS Foundation’s annual emerging trends research into a growth agenda.
Growth in the AEC industry is becoming increasingly interconnected. Strategic judgment matters more as AI accelerates routine work. Current clients hold significant growth potential and realizing it depends on broader relationships and usable client intelligence. Buyers are researching, comparing, and shortlisting firms through new digital and AI-influenced pathways, raising the value of visible expertise and trusted data.
Simultaneously, shifts are taking place inside our firms that are already struggling to balance project delivery, talent pressures, client commitments, and near-term business goals. Success requires coordinated development across people, relationships, processes, and systems.
SMPS Foundation’s 2027 Emerging Trends in AEC Marketing and Business Development research, in collaboration with Stambaugh Ness, helps make those connections visible. By examining both anticipated impact and current readiness, the report provides a way to identify where future opportunity is moving faster than organizational capacity.
Readiness makes priorities visible
The pattern appears across the research. Eighty-four percent of respondents consider strategic and critical thinking and advanced communication highly impactful, while 30% say their firms are highly ready to train for those capabilities. Seventy-four percent see client experience as highly impactful, with 22% reporting high readiness to use it as a differentiator.
Technology produces some of the widest gaps. Seventy-one percent consider improved data management and infrastructure highly impactful, while 10% report high readiness. For AI-enabled workflows and automation, the comparison is 68% to 13%.
Gaps of this size carry useful information. They identify where firms see emerging value, where capacity is still developing, and where focused investment could strengthen several areas of performance at once.
The readiness findings can serve as a map. Leadership teams can use them to locate areas where the firm already has momentum, understand which supporting conditions require attention, and identify the capabilities most closely connected to future growth.
Three trends, one growth system
The report explores the changing talent stack, growth through current clients, and a technology-first mindset. Together, they describe a single growth system.
AI fluency becomes more valuable when paired with strategic judgment and advanced communication. Current-client growth becomes more intentional when relationship knowledge is shared, client needs are understood, and connections extend across functions and levels. Client experience becomes actionable when insight has an owner and a path into account strategy. Data infrastructure creates business value when people can use it to improve pursuit decisions, client engagement, visible expertise, and performance measurement.
Each capability strengthens the others. Better client intelligence improves account planning and marketing relevance. Stronger data supports AI-enabled workflows. Greater strategic judgment helps professionals interpret information, question assumptions, and apply technology appropriately. More visible expertise helps buyers understand the firm’s value before a pursuit begins.
Read this way, the report offers more than a set of priorities. It shows how the underlying components of growth fit together.
Read the measures together
Individual metrics rarely tell the entire story.
The research found that 74% of respondents rate their repeat-client revenue above or far above average. More than 45%, however, rate cross-selling and account growth average or below. Together, those findings show how an account can remain productive while the relationship stays concentrated around one contact, one service, or one part of the client organization.
The same principle applies elsewhere:
- Technology adoption shows whether tools are entering the work.
- Measures such as quality, reduced rework, time reinvestment, and conversion show whether the work is improving.
- Training participation demonstrates access to development.
- Application to real pursuits, client conversations, and business decisions reveals whether capability is growing.
Metrics become more meaningful when firms examine them in pairs: activity and outcome, continuity and depth, speed and quality, visibility and conversion. This broader view helps reveal whether an investment is changing performance or simply adding activity.
Choose an entry point
A focused initiative can provide an entry point into this larger growth system.
One firm might begin with several priority clients, mapping relationship depth, gathering client feedback, sharing intelligence, and identifying unmet needs. Another might select a high-value pursuit workflow, strengthen its data inputs, establish human review, and test where AI can improve quality or efficiency. A third might use live client and pursuit situations to develop strategic thinking alongside AI and data fluency.
The report’s readiness assessments, metrics, and action steps can help firms select that starting point and understand the dependencies surrounding it. The resulting effort becomes a learning loop: make a focused change, observe the result, strengthen the supporting conditions, and apply what was learned more broadly.
Marketing and business development professionals can use the research in much the same way. Its findings provide a view of where professional value is moving and which capabilities will reinforce one another. Strategic questioning can be developed alongside AI-assisted research. Client-listening skills can be paired with stronger CRM discipline. Technical storytelling can support expertise-led visibility across digital and AI-influenced buyer journeys.
Emerging-trends research gives the industry a shared view of what is developing. Readiness data turns that view into practical intelligence. The greatest value comes from using the findings to connect investments, clarify priorities, and make better growth decisions.
Explore the 2027 Emerging Trends in AEC Marketing and Business Development report, including its readiness assessments, metrics, segment findings, and actions for firms and professionals.
For more information about the SMPS Foundation, please visit our Foundation page.
Article written by SMPS Foundation Board Trustee Fawn Radmanich, FSMPS, CPSM.