In this year’s 9th Annual QorusDocs Proposal Management Benchmark Survey, we took the pulse of the proposal and RFP landscape, with a focus on service industries—Professional Services (accounting, consulting, staffing), Legal, IT Services and SaaS, and Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC).
And today, it’s time to explore the AEC sector, which comprised approximately 20% of all responses, and look at the trends we saw in 2024. Fasten your seatbelts, here we go!
As B2B organizations seek to drive efficiency, productivity, and cost savings to increase margins, our latest survey offers up valuable data and actionable insights to help optimize your proposal, RFP response, and pursuit processes to drive sustainable growth moving forward.
More than half (54%) of our respondents in all industries reported an increase in pitch volume in 2024, with an increase of an average of five pitches (median eight) per month. The AEC sector is a little more restrained with 20% of AEC respondents reported increases of between one to five monthly pitches.
Across the board, the number of RFPs increased at a slower pace compared to last year. Fifty-two percent reported an increase of between one and five RFPs per month while 36% experienced a jump of six to 10 RFPs every month. Despite these increases, many organizations have been unable to grow their RFP volumes for the past two years. And 80% of AEC organizations saw no change in their RFP volumes over 2023, compared to 40% of companies that saw no year-over-year (YoY) change in RFP volume. The remaining 20% of AEC organizations realized a one to five monthly gain in RFPs.
In general, most respondents to this year’s survey personally work on creating content for an average of seven RFPs per month, and while volumes varied from industry to industry, AEC checked in with the lowest results — with individuals working on an average of three RFPs each month. This slower pace may be due to the large scope and scale of AEC projects.
And, when it comes to pitches, the average overall number of pitches reported is eight pitches per month. In contrast, 80% of AEC organizations completed only one to two pitches each month, likely due to the fact that the majority of business development-related content generation at AEC firms is tied to RFP responses vs. less complex pitches.
The value of RFP opportunities in 2024 ranged from less than $50K (8% of respondents) to more than $10M (14%), with the majority of respondents reporting values of less than $1M.
Things are looking good in the AEC sector as the size of RFP opportunities in those organizations trended higher, with 40% of respondents reporting opportunity values greater than $10M, although the median opportunity size matched the overall median of $3M.
For those organizations that calculated the share of revenue stemming from RFP wins in 2024, income attributed to winning RFP responses for existing client business (mean 46%) came out ahead of new client business (mean 36%).
AEC organizations had noticeable success building on relationships with existing clients this year. While 43% of AEC organizations surveyed attributed 25%-49% of revenue to winning RFP responses from new clients and 29% of respondents said new business RFP successes accounted for 75% or more of 2024 sales revenue— impressive results, granted—revenue from winning RFP responses from existing clients was even more impressive.
A majority (50%) of AEC respondents attributed 50% -74% of revenue to RFP wins from existing clients and a sizeable 38% of organizations reported that a whopping 75% or more sales revenue came from winning RFP responses for existing clients.
Across the industry verticals, the challenge of SMEs meeting schedule and delivery deadlines is the top roadblock. A whopping 80% of AEC respondents ranking it as their top issue.
While also dealing with SME input challenges, AEC respondents (tied with SME scheduling challenges at 80%) also listed creating content from scratch/getting started as the major hurdle in their response process.
The number of individuals involved in responding to RFPs within an organization varies considerably—from less than five people to more than 50 employees—depending on the size and specialization of the organization.
Likely given the complexity and diversity of their projects, AEC firms had significantly more people involved in responding to RFP requests, with a median of 50 employees involved; in fact, a whopping 60% of AEC respondents indicated 50+ people contribute to their RFP response process, compared with only 18% across all survey respondents citing 50+ contributors.
Responding to RFPs and creating proposals and pitches is a resource-intensive and time-consuming endeavor. Most respondents took between six and 10 days to complete an RFP response, spending an average of 9.3 days on the request. Completion time trends longer, with the 2024 and 2023 levels both greater than nine days, on average—up from an average of six business days in 2022 and seven days in 2021.
AEC respondents spent the most time responding to a request this year, spending an average of 16 days working on a request, with 40% of those surveyed taking 20+ days, 30% spending six to 10 days, and 20% taking 11-20 days to complete a request.
The choice of software for creating response documents impacts both the efficacy of the response process and the quality of the documents. When respondents were asked which software application they use to generate request responses in 2024, Microsoft 365—and Microsoft Word in particular—stood out as the overwhelming favorite again with 93% of the vote. For the AEC sector, 50% used Microsoft Word, with PowerPoint checking in at 25%.
AEC respondents are also huge Microsoft fans, with 90% keeping their content in SharePoint and 20% storing it in Teams. Copilot was also the primary GenAI choice across all industries surveyed, including AEC.
While other sectors may be taking a wait-and-see approach to AI, not AEC! AEC firms have jumped in with both feet, taking advantage of GenAI to optimize content generation tasks. This sector leverages it for:
Researching and summarizing content (90% of AEC respondents);
Writing bios (80%),
Executive summaries (70%), and copy blocks (60%);
And answering RFP questions (40%).
This year’s survey results revealed an opportunity for organizations to add millions in annual revenue to their top line, thanks to GenAI-driven productivity. Given the widely- accepted 50%-70% efficiency gains delivered by GenAI—in alignment with the time savings and capacity increase we’ve seen in the 2024 survey and across the QorusDocs customer base—organizations, on average, can potentially add an estimated $21M to their gross income.
(But don’t just take our word for it! See how QorusDoc helped WSP, an AEC consulting firm, simplify the pursuits process to scale growth.)
To explore these key takeaways in greater depth and discover more actionable insights to help you boost the performance of your response process, get your copy of the 9th Annual Proposal Management Benchmark Survey.
Curious about how we can help you streamline your proposal process and boost both productivity and revenue? Book a demo to see for yourself.