Architecture and engineering firm operations audit Plans tweaked again. No amendment written. We find where the fee leaks.
Extra services on a verbal yes, phases waiting on a milestone to bill, invoices paid months late. In two weeks, from the firm’s own records, we put a monthly dollar figure on each one.
- Fixed fee
- $4,500
- Length
- Two weeks
- Access to records
- Read-only
For architecture and engineering firms at $1M a year and up.
+1 (202) 600-6027Mon–Fri, 9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET · A real person answers or calls you back the same business day.After hours? Book the call online: one form, no calendar
Sound familiar?
What firm principals say about the money they can’t find.
01
Additional services on a verbal yes
The client asks for one more option, the team draws it, and writing the amendment is nobody’s job. The hours land on the original fee.
02
Small extras written off as goodwill
Asking the client for more feels awkward, so a quick change becomes a freebie. Nobody records it as a decision, so nobody can count it.
03
Work delivered, waiting on a milestone
Billing waits for the phase to close, so finished work sits unbilled, and a stalled milestone makes it hard to ask for payment at all.
04
Invoices waiting months to be paid
Clients pay on their own clock, and following up on a schedule is nobody’s job. The balance gets noticed when cash is tight.
05
The fee runs out in construction administration
CA hours run past what the fee allowed, with no cap in the agreement and no one watching the phase budget until it is gone.
06
Busy all year, unsure where the money went
Staff are booked and the year still ends thin, because time posted late or to the wrong project hides which work earned its fee.
Paraphrased from public owner forum threads and trade-press interviews — not from our clients.
None of this is fixed by bringing in more business. Each leak sits in work already on the books.
Where it stalls
From the first call to the cleared payment: where the money stalls.
- Inquiry
- Hand-off 01 to Proposal
- Hand-off 02 to Agreement
- Hand-off 03 to Phase
- Hand-off 04 to Invoice
- Hand-off 05 to Paid
- Hand-off 06 to Margin
- Hand-off 03 · Agreement → Phase
Additional services drawn on a verbal yes, with no signed amendment.
- Hand-off 04 · Phase → Invoice
Phases complete and waiting on a milestone to bill.
- Hand-off 05 · Invoice → Paid
Invoices past terms by client, and retainers never requested.
- Hand-off 06 · Paid → Margin
Hours posted late or to the wrong phase, and fee used up in CA.
Before any new software
Large companies are spending heavily on AI. Few can show what it returned.
7%
of 2,145 senior leaders at companies with $100M+ in revenue reported having established a return on AI — while planning to spend an average of $188 million each on it.
Source: KPMG Global AI Pulse, Q2 2026
Those are companies with their own IT departments and budgets. A smaller business that buys a tool on a hunch has less room for the same mistake.
Leaders with strong visibility into costs were five times as likely to report a return on AI (15% against 3%). The same release adds that without clear ownership, decisions fragment and impact gets harder to track.
Source: KPMG Global AI Pulse, Q2 2026
Free · two taps · no email
Check one hand-off yourself, right now.
Three questions, from your own records
On active projects, how many hours are coded to work outside the signed scope, and how many of those have an amendment?
How many phases are complete on the schedule but not yet invoiced, and how many days has the oldest one waited?
How long after the work does time get entered, on average, and how much was written down at the last billing?
If an answer takes digging, note where the record lives. That is where the Review starts.
Free self-check · two taps · no email
Hand-off 4 of 6 · Delivery → Invoice
Choose the answer that sounds like your business.
That was one of six hand-offs where money changes hands, from first inquiry to collected cash. The other five take about three minutes and end in a dated sheet that names where to start.
How it runs
Two weeks, $4,500, one finding you can act on.
Day 0
A 20-minute call
Fit, not yet, or not us. No deck, no payment.
Days 1–14
We read the records
Read-only exports from the systems you already run. Nothing switched off, nothing to install.
Day 14
The findings, in writing
Each leak with a monthly dollar figure, the order to fix them in, and the first fix to start the next morning — the firm’s to keep whatever the partners decide.
$2,250 to begin, the balance when the report arrives. The fee does not change with what the Review finds, and the written report is yours to keep.
What we price
Each leak gets a monthly dollar figure.
Additional services worked without a signed amendment, read from time entries coded to a project after its scope was fixed
Phases complete on the schedule but not yet invoiced, and the days each one waited
Consultant invoices passed through late or at cost when the agreement allows a markup
Time entered long after it was worked, and the write-downs that follow at billing
Receivables past terms, by client, and retainers or deposits never requested
Who runs it
Small on purpose. Senior on purpose.
A team with ten-plus years in strategic consulting and business-process automation. Before Lumina, our people built and ran revenue operations inside a Fortune 500 US financial institution.
Tamara Stepanyan, founder
No client case studies yet — we would rather tell you that than invent one.
Before you call
Questions firm principals ask first.
Our project-accounting software already tracks earned value. What would you add?
The software reports what was entered and coded. The leaks sit in what was never coded as extra work, phases waiting on a percent-complete update, and consultant invoices that arrive after billing. We read time, agreements, amendments, consultant invoices and the aging against each other. If your reports already answer our three questions, the free 20-minute call will show that.
The partners all need to agree. How does that work?
The Review is a fixed fee of $4,500 for two weeks, with the scope confirmed in writing before payment, so it fits a single decision. The findings are written for the partner group, with the arithmetic shown, so the decision on fixes can be made together afterward.
Do you need our drawings or models?
No. We read hours, phases, dates, agreements and amounts. Drawings, models and client files stay where they are, and any client-restricted data is excluded or de-identified before access.
What do we walk away with?
A findings document with a monthly dollar figure on each leak the records can show, and a fix list ordered by what the numbers justify. The written documents stay with the firm whatever it decides next.
Related reading
In depth
The long version, for an owner who wants the detail.
Owner-led design and engineering firms past the founder stage
The Review is built for architecture and engineering firms doing about $1 million a year and up, where project managers, not only the founder, now run projects and billing. The Census Bureau counted 6,651 architectural firms with 2022 receipts of $1 million or more, out of 21,294 employer firms in NAICS 541310, and 17,122 engineering firms at that size, out of 45,692 in NAICS 541330.
Those counts size the field. A firm’s own leak shows only in its own time, agreements and billing records.
Where fee slips between the agreement and the payment
Each step hands the project to a different person or system. The Review counts what slips at each one.
Proposal to agreement: scope, phases and the fee schedule
Agreement to design work: requests that grow the scope without an amendment
Work to time entry: hours entered late, coded to the wrong phase, or not at all
Phase complete to invoice: the percent-complete update and the billing cycle
Consultant invoice to pass-through: timing and the agreed markup
Invoice to payment: terms, retainers and receivables that age
Where automation and AI can help once the leak is measured
Tools come after the numbers, and only where a leak is large enough to justify them. A person approves every change to a client’s fee.
Scope watch: an alert when hours on a phase pass a set share of its fee and no amendment exists
Billing trigger: a phase marked complete on the schedule opens its invoice for the project manager to approve
Pass-through queue: consultant invoices logged on arrival and matched to the next billing, with the agreed markup applied
AI-assisted reading of meeting notes and client emails to flag requests that may be outside the signed scope; the project manager decides what becomes an amendment
The numbers that show whether the fixes hold
We do not promise a result. These are the measures the findings are written in, so the firm can track them after the Review.
Unbilled work in progress, in days of revenue
Days from phase completion to invoice
Share of out-of-scope hours covered by a signed amendment
Time-entry lag and billing write-downs
Days sales outstanding by client
Two weeks, read-only, then a written fix list
Week one is a kickoff call and read-only access to project accounting, agreements and the aging. Week two is the count, priced in monthly dollars. The readout delivers the findings and a fix list in the order the numbers justify. Building any fix is a separate decision, scoped after the Review.
Sources
Statistics of U.S. Businesses 2022: firms, employment and receipts by enterprise receipts size, 6-digit NAICS · U.S. Census Bureau, 2025
AIA Document B101–2017, Standard Form of Agreement Between Owner and Architect, §§1.1.1 and 4.2.1 · American Institute of Architects, 2017
The next step
Tell us what isn’t getting followed up. We’ll tell you if we can help.
- Send the form beside this. A person reads it, not a bot or a ticket queue. We call you back the same business day.
- 20-minute call: fit, not yet, or not us.
- If it fits: the Revenue Review, $4,500 flat, two weeks.
+1 (202) 600-6027Mon–Fri, 9 a.m.–6 p.m. ET · A real person answers or calls you back the same business day.