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
Profitable Projects: A Three-Part Series on AEC Profitability - Setting the Right Fee for Success
Profitable Projects: A Three-Part Series on AEC Profitability - Setting the Right Fee for Success
Profitable Projects: A Three-Part Series on AEC Profitability - Setting the Right Fee for Success
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Profitable Projects: A Three-Part Series on AEC Profitability
Welcome to Profitable Projects, a three-part series designed to help Architecture, Engineering and Construction firms improve project profitability.
Across the series, we explore three fundamentals of financial performance in AEC practices:
Setting the Right Fee for Success (you are here)
Each article focuses on practical, data-led strategies that reflect how AEC firms operate today.
Mastering the art of fee setting in AEC
In architecture and engineering, profitability hinges on a careful balance of cost control, project management and client communication. Few decisions have a greater impact on that balance than how fees are set.
Set fees too low, and even well-run projects struggle to perform financially. Set them correctly, and profitability becomes far more predictable.
The foundation: getting the fee right
Percentage-based fees versus bottom-up calculation
Many firms still rely on percentage-based fees, often guided by industry benchmarks. While familiar, this approach frequently breaks down on complex or non-standard projects.
A more reliable method is bottom-up fee calculation, where the fee is built directly from the defined scope of services and the cost to deliver them.
From Fresh Projects data, projects using bottom-up fee calculations consistently achieve stronger profit margins than those relying on percentage-based pricing. This reflects the value of grounding fees in real effort rather than assumptions.
Defining the scope of services
A clearly defined scope of services is essential for fair compensation and effective expectation management.
A detailed scope protects against scope creep and creates a clear commercial framework for managing change. Where scope is well defined, variations are far more likely to generate additional profit rather than erode margins.
This makes upfront clarity one of the most commercially valuable steps in the project lifecycle.
Calculating delivery costs accurately
Effective fee setting requires a clear understanding of delivery costs. This includes:
Labour effort by role and project stage
Hourly cost rates that account for utilisation and overheads
Direct project expenses
Without this level of detail, fees are often set too low to recover the true cost of delivery.
Quantifying project value
Bottom-up pricing should reflect more than cost recovery alone. It should also consider the value delivered to the client.
As one industry commentator put it, value pricing is not about charging what you are worth. It is about charging what the client values.
For example, an engineering firm that designs a sustainable office building delivering meaningful energy savings can quantify that long-term benefit and reflect it in the fee.
Image reference: X (Twitter) – @mwmoedinger
Tracking projected costs throughout the project
Even well-priced projects can lose profitability if costs are not tracked in real time.
Direct project costs
Expenses such as supplier invoices and travel should be tracked against each project and billed where appropriate. Linking direct costs to projects improves recovery and reduces leakage.
Time costs
Labour typically represents the largest cost in AEC firms. Tracking time accurately, including overhead allocation, allows practices to identify overruns early and take corrective action.
Visual tools such as scatter charts often reveal how time is actually being spent across different roles. These insights frequently highlight senior staff spending a disproportionate amount of time on administrative work rather than fee-earning delivery.
Pro tip
In many firms, partners and directors spend significant time running the business. Delegating procedural and financial tasks to lower cost roles often delivers a meaningful uplift in profitability by freeing senior staff to focus on high-value project work.
Image reference: Fresh Projects scatter chart
Managing scope creep effectively
Scope creep, the expansion of work beyond the original agreement, can quickly erode margins if not managed proactively.
Prevention strategies
To manage scope creep effectively, firms should:
Agree and sign clear contracts that define inclusions, exclusions and rates for additional work
Establish a formal process for handling out-of-scope requests
Track out-of-scope time separately to enable transparent billing and informed decisions
Structured processes and consistent tracking turn scope changes into manageable commercial conversations.
The profit timeline: design versus construction
Image reference: Fresh Projects dashboard showing profit distribution across project phases
A common pattern emerges across many projects. Early design stages often generate profit, while margins are eroded during construction. This makes vigilant scope and cost management particularly important later in the project lifecycle.
Visualising out-of-scope work
Image reference: Fresh Projects dashboard showing out-of-scope tracking
Separately tracking additional time and expenses serves two purposes:
It provides evidence to support additional fee requests
It explains why a project may have underperformed financially
Turning scope creep into a profit centre
Image reference: Fresh Projects dashboard showing scope creep as a profit centre
Some firms are reframing scope creep as an opportunity rather than a threat. By rigorously tracking and pricing variations, they maintain or even increase profitability as projects evolve.
One firm working on a mixed-use development successfully negotiated additional fees for extensive design changes by presenting clear, data-backed evidence of additional effort. Despite significant scope expansion, the project remained profitable.
Conclusion: the path to profitable projects
Profitable AEC projects are built on strong foundations. Bottom-up fee setting, real-time cost tracking and disciplined scope management all play a critical role.
Tools like Fresh Projects support this approach by providing visibility and structure that allow firms to protect margins while continuing to deliver high-quality work.
In the next articles in the series, we will explore:
Together, these form a practical framework for improving profitability across your practice.
Profitable Projects: A Three-Part Series on AEC Profitability
Welcome to Profitable Projects, a three-part series designed to help Architecture, Engineering and Construction firms improve project profitability.
Across the series, we explore three fundamentals of financial performance in AEC practices:
Setting the Right Fee for Success (you are here)
Each article focuses on practical, data-led strategies that reflect how AEC firms operate today.
Mastering the art of fee setting in AEC
In architecture and engineering, profitability hinges on a careful balance of cost control, project management and client communication. Few decisions have a greater impact on that balance than how fees are set.
Set fees too low, and even well-run projects struggle to perform financially. Set them correctly, and profitability becomes far more predictable.
The foundation: getting the fee right
Percentage-based fees versus bottom-up calculation
Many firms still rely on percentage-based fees, often guided by industry benchmarks. While familiar, this approach frequently breaks down on complex or non-standard projects.
A more reliable method is bottom-up fee calculation, where the fee is built directly from the defined scope of services and the cost to deliver them.
From Fresh Projects data, projects using bottom-up fee calculations consistently achieve stronger profit margins than those relying on percentage-based pricing. This reflects the value of grounding fees in real effort rather than assumptions.
Defining the scope of services
A clearly defined scope of services is essential for fair compensation and effective expectation management.
A detailed scope protects against scope creep and creates a clear commercial framework for managing change. Where scope is well defined, variations are far more likely to generate additional profit rather than erode margins.
This makes upfront clarity one of the most commercially valuable steps in the project lifecycle.
Calculating delivery costs accurately
Effective fee setting requires a clear understanding of delivery costs. This includes:
Labour effort by role and project stage
Hourly cost rates that account for utilisation and overheads
Direct project expenses
Without this level of detail, fees are often set too low to recover the true cost of delivery.
Quantifying project value
Bottom-up pricing should reflect more than cost recovery alone. It should also consider the value delivered to the client.
As one industry commentator put it, value pricing is not about charging what you are worth. It is about charging what the client values.
For example, an engineering firm that designs a sustainable office building delivering meaningful energy savings can quantify that long-term benefit and reflect it in the fee.
Image reference: X (Twitter) – @mwmoedinger
Tracking projected costs throughout the project
Even well-priced projects can lose profitability if costs are not tracked in real time.
Direct project costs
Expenses such as supplier invoices and travel should be tracked against each project and billed where appropriate. Linking direct costs to projects improves recovery and reduces leakage.
Time costs
Labour typically represents the largest cost in AEC firms. Tracking time accurately, including overhead allocation, allows practices to identify overruns early and take corrective action.
Visual tools such as scatter charts often reveal how time is actually being spent across different roles. These insights frequently highlight senior staff spending a disproportionate amount of time on administrative work rather than fee-earning delivery.
Pro tip
In many firms, partners and directors spend significant time running the business. Delegating procedural and financial tasks to lower cost roles often delivers a meaningful uplift in profitability by freeing senior staff to focus on high-value project work.
Image reference: Fresh Projects scatter chart
Managing scope creep effectively
Scope creep, the expansion of work beyond the original agreement, can quickly erode margins if not managed proactively.
Prevention strategies
To manage scope creep effectively, firms should:
Agree and sign clear contracts that define inclusions, exclusions and rates for additional work
Establish a formal process for handling out-of-scope requests
Track out-of-scope time separately to enable transparent billing and informed decisions
Structured processes and consistent tracking turn scope changes into manageable commercial conversations.
The profit timeline: design versus construction
Image reference: Fresh Projects dashboard showing profit distribution across project phases
A common pattern emerges across many projects. Early design stages often generate profit, while margins are eroded during construction. This makes vigilant scope and cost management particularly important later in the project lifecycle.
Visualising out-of-scope work
Image reference: Fresh Projects dashboard showing out-of-scope tracking
Separately tracking additional time and expenses serves two purposes:
It provides evidence to support additional fee requests
It explains why a project may have underperformed financially
Turning scope creep into a profit centre
Image reference: Fresh Projects dashboard showing scope creep as a profit centre
Some firms are reframing scope creep as an opportunity rather than a threat. By rigorously tracking and pricing variations, they maintain or even increase profitability as projects evolve.
One firm working on a mixed-use development successfully negotiated additional fees for extensive design changes by presenting clear, data-backed evidence of additional effort. Despite significant scope expansion, the project remained profitable.
Conclusion: the path to profitable projects
Profitable AEC projects are built on strong foundations. Bottom-up fee setting, real-time cost tracking and disciplined scope management all play a critical role.
Tools like Fresh Projects support this approach by providing visibility and structure that allow firms to protect margins while continuing to deliver high-quality work.
In the next articles in the series, we will explore:
Together, these form a practical framework for improving profitability across your practice.
Published:
Published:
Why Reporting Still Leaves Architecture and Engineering Firms Guessing
Why Reporting Still Leaves Architecture and Engineering Firms Guessing
Why Reporting Still Leaves Architecture and Engineering Firms Guessing
Inside many built environment firms, meetings meant for decisions quietly turn into debates about the numbers on the page.
Inside many built environment firms, meetings meant for decisions quietly turn into debates about the numbers on the page.
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If One Office Says “That’s Not How We Do It”, Leadership is Flying Blind
If One Office Says “That’s Not How We Do It”, Leadership is Flying Blind
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In many built environment consultancies, reporting technically works. The challenge is that clarity often arrives after the moment when it would have influenced action.
In many built environment consultancies, reporting technically works. The challenge is that clarity often arrives after the moment when it would have influenced action.
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Even with reporting systems in place, many architecture, engineering and quantity surveying firms find that insight arrives too late to influence decisions during delivery.
Even with reporting systems in place, many architecture, engineering and quantity surveying firms find that insight arrives too late to influence decisions during delivery.
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How to Compare Practice Management Tools for Architect and Engineering Firms in 2026
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Choosing a practice management system is no longer about feature lists. This guide explains how architecture and engineering firms should compare tools in 2026, focusing on adoption, usability and decision-making rather than complexity.
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Autumn Budget 2025: What It Means for Architecture and Engineering Firms
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Implications for resourcing, margins and medium-term planning
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How Larger Architecture and Engineering Firms Stay Profitable in a Slower Construction Market
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What 50–100 person practices are tightening up when pipelines soften
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Why Traditional Reporting is Holding A&E Firms Back
Why Traditional Reporting is Holding A&E Firms Back
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Spreadsheets in A&E Firms: Usage, Key Features, and Underappreciated Gems
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A practical guide to using Excel and Sheets well, and knowing when to graduate to purpose-built systems without losing the flexibility you love.
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Breaking Barriers in AEC: Meet the Women Driving Fresh Projects
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Why representation, visibility and better systems matter for the future of architecture and engineering
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Legacy Firms, Future Focus: Why Architecture’s Crossroads Is a Leadership Moment
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How firm leaders can protect margin, prepare successors and modernise delivery without losing what made them successful
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Outgrowing Spreadsheets: 5 Ways to Maintain Profitability as Your Firm Grows
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How architecture and engineering practices protect margin as teams and project complexity increase
How architecture and engineering practices protect margin as teams and project complexity increase
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The Profitability Pyramid: Where UK Architecture Firms Make and Lose Money
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Understanding the real drivers of financial performance for medium and large practices over the past year
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3 Lessons to Help You Run a More Profitable Practice
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Practical insights from A&E leaders on spotting profit risks early, communicating value, and protecting margins
Practical insights from A&E leaders on spotting profit risks early, communicating value, and protecting margins
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Embracing Neurodiversity in Architecture
Embracing Neurodiversity in Architecture
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How inclusive practice design can unlock creativity, innovation and operational clarity
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Profitable Projects: Winning the Right Projects in AEC
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How to qualify leads, focus your pipeline and forecast success more confidently
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Profitable Projects: The Art of Cashflow Alchemy in AEC
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How architecture and engineering firms can turn unpredictable cash flow into a strategic advantage
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Profitable Projects: A Three-Part Series on AEC Profitability - Setting the Right Fee for Success
Profitable Projects: A Three-Part Series on AEC Profitability - Setting the Right Fee for Success
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Why bottom-up fee setting, clear scope and real-time cost visibility underpin profitable projects
Why bottom-up fee setting, clear scope and real-time cost visibility underpin profitable projects
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How Firm Management Tools for Architects and Engineers Drastically Increase Profits
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Why better visibility across projects, people and finances is now essential for sustainable practice performance
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How to Manage Inflation on Architecture Projects
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Practical ways to protect fees and margins when costs change mid-project
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An Architect’s Guide to Project Budgeting
An Architect’s Guide to Project Budgeting
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How to build realistic, profitable project budgets that support better pricing and delivery
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An Architect’s Guide to Managing Scope Creep
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How to protect fees, margins and client relationships when projects change
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Improve Project Profitability: An Architect’s Guide
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Pricing Methods for Architects: How to Price Architecture Services
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When to use hourly rates, fixed fees or percentage pricing, and how to choose with confidence
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Calculate Your Cost Rate in 3 Simple Steps
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I Love Excel. I Hate Excel.
I Love Excel. I Hate Excel.
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How accurate budgeting and disciplined scope control protect profitability in 50–100 person A&E practices
How accurate budgeting and disciplined scope control protect profitability in 50–100 person A&E practices
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Why Hidden Working Capital Is the Silent Risk in Large Architecture and Engineering Firms
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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
