The success of The HFW Companies depends largely on our ability to bring together the right AE partners under our innovative operations platform.
We look for well-run legacy firms with strong technical reputations within their geographic markets, collaborative multi-generational teams, ambitious visions for scalable new growth and expansion…and a desire to become an HFW company as an integral part of our premier, best-in-class national AE network.
Together, we amplify the collective expertise of our network and provide the operations platform and other crucial business resources needed to create greater long-term value for HFW, our network firms, employees, clients, investors, and the communities we serve.
Our team provides highly qualified executive leadership and a ground-breaking operational strategy that offers small and mid-sized firms a unique and scalable growth option. We provide them with an advanced platform for project delivery, HR, and accounting/finance support while also helping them leverage their reputation and expertise in their geographic markets and across a national footprint.
We provide new opportunities to grow and expand through synergies gained by collaborating with other HFW companies in our network.
Our model, built on our agility and resilience in the marketplace, adapts to the pace of change in today’s business environment, giving small and middle-market AE firms a level of command typically afforded only big firms.
Unlike traditional M&A models, HFW partners with select AE firms to elevate them to the next level while enabling sellers to focus on their true passions, whether designing, engineering, surveying, or planning. Even spending more time with family and friends.
Our innovative business platform, powered by HFW leaders who are industry veterans and experts in their fields, includes HR, recruiting, business development support, project management/controls support, finance, and other operational processes.
This enables our network firms to focus more on what they do best: building meaningful, long-term client relationships in their communities and providing exceptional project delivery on engineering, architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, land surveying, and planning.
HFW companies immediately plug into our fast-growing network of firms whose critical mass enables us to leverage our combined buying power across our national footprint.
We flex that buying power to save on the cost of a wide range of business services, from insurance and technical computer software systems and solutions to health care and other employee benefits.
Partnering with HFW strategically positions HFW companies to take advantage of greater opportunities for growth, whether through bigger projects, expanded services, strategic hires, or acquisitions to expand their geographic reach and market-sector expertise.
Partnering with HFW places new HFW network firms in great collective company with our national pool of collaborative talent and experience across a diverse continuum of technical and market-sector expertise.
Our firms leverage that access to deliver new and expanded technical abilities to the clients and communities we serve, making all of us stronger together.
Of course, our firms also stay closely aligned as they collaborate, share best practices and growth strategies, elevate their collective training and development efforts, and seek growth opportunities together.
To power our company’s vision of accelerated growth and expansion, HFW also brings capital and other financial resources to facilitate our next-level growth.
Our experienced corporate development team works closely with our firms to enable strategic acquisition investments and guide them in successfully integrating the cultures of all new partners with our HFW companies.
Here's what you can do to prepare:
Build enough deep and diversified bench strength to avoid “key-man” risk.
Build a diversified client base with enough balance between public- and private-sector projects to minimize risk during economic downturns.
Focus more on desirable end-markets, service lines, and locations as you build your backlog.
Develop a comprehensive leadership succession plan – as well as next-tier leaders who can support it.
Make sure all your leaders are developing a diversity of strong relationships with your clients.
Revenue growth is good, of course, but the key to success is sustainable project management/delivery that effectively manages time, fees, change orders and other factors that otherwise can erode profit margins.
Evaluating AE firms is part science, part art; value drivers rise and fall based on where a firm is in its life cycle. The strongest AE firms don’t try to fix everything at once; they identify true pain points and build organizations that can thrive beyond any one individual. Above all, sustainable growth and lasting value are created by never losing sight of who built the firm in the first place: its people.Jason Donker, HFW’s corporate development director and M&A expert