Senior leaders reveal how they’re adapting to project pipeline uncertainty, skills gaps, and rapid advances in AI at key peer roundtables.
It’s not easy running an engineering consultancy in 2025, with leaders navigating uneven project pipelines, skills shortages and a shifting AI landscape.
To get a peek behind the closed doors at what matters most to industry leaders, project intelligence platform Projectworks partnered with Engineers Australia to host peer roundtables in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. The sessions brought 40 senior leaders together for a rare, candid conversation on navigating the industry’s most pressing challenges.
Here, create examines the common pain points and where leaders should focus their attention going forward.
Short horizons require sharper utilisation
Engineering leaders in each state described a genuine uptick in future opportunity – with public investment tied to net-zero commitments, along with Olympics-adjacent works in Brisbane. However, procurement is yet to catch up, said Mark Orttung, CEO of Projectworks.
“These works are on the near horizon, but they are not seeing projects come through immediately,” he said.
That timing gap forces leaders to shorten their planning horizon and interrogate near-term capacity with more rigour than usual.
“People are watching their utilisation very closely today because the amount of work versus headcount is tight,” Orttung said.
This is where having clear, forward-looking data becomes non-negotiable.
“It’s the hardest problem in a consulting business – selling work and hiring at exactly the same rate, while you judge when to invest for the lift everyone believes is coming,” Orttung said. “Tools like Projectworks are crucial here, helping you look at your utilisation now and weeks into the future. The project financials and projections are key to planning for tight short-term margins.”
Developing the next generation
The ongoing skills shortage was a dominant theme, with the conversation quickly turning to a critical question: are university graduates emerging with the right skills?
The consensus was that while fresh graduates are adept at mastering new software, they sometimes lack the fundamental engineering judgement that comes with experience.
Rather than simply lamenting the issue, the discussion highlighted proactive strategies. Leaders emphasised the need for robust internal educational strategies aimed at developing junior and intermediate staff into senior roles.
Participants also shared insights on how fostering an inclusive, flexible work environment can support younger engineers, providing them with mentorship opportunities and a clear path to professional ownership.
Retaining core talent was underscored, with leaders noting that job satisfaction and workload stability are essential for employee retention.
Keeping an eye on AI
When the conversation shifted to AI, the mood was one of pragmatic experimentation, not hype. Leaders shared examples of areas where they are finding tangible value, including experimenting with AI to deliver client work.
Despite uncertainty around AI’s role and growing capabilities, the roundtable’s consensus was clear: use AI to cut the grunt work and speed up analysis – but don’t outsource engineering judgement.
“Examples that made sense to leaders include taking a very large data set and using AI to find patterns or summarise the data as an input to something across a broad area, along with administrative and text-heavy use such as summarising or generating a first draft,” Orttung said. “But nobody is at the point in delivery of an engineering project where they will just trust the answer.”
The opportunity for consultancies is to guide which tools to try, how to validate outputs and where autonomy should stop.
“The bottom line is getting more productivity out of your current team while still making the judgment calls,” he said.
Scaling smoothly on a single platform
In its Engineers Australia endorsed report, Engineering in Australia: Built for Growth, Projectworks urges leaders in engineering firms to start with three simple questions:
- Are we healthy?
- Are we growing?
- Are we in control?
The report includes a rapid project intelligence audit that shows – in just a few minutes – whether your systems, processes and financial foundations are strong enough to scale without stretching your team thin.
“For ambitious Australian firms, Projectworks also outlines key metrics to track for sustainable growth, including gross margin, resource deployment (human utilisation) and the book-to-bill ratio,” Orttung said.
This was the case for infrastructure advisory firm MBB, which experienced a rapid 277 per cent headcount increase and multi-year projects.
Projectworks gave MBB a single, trusted source of live project and utilisation data, replacing fragmented systems and enabling faster, better-informed decisions across 254 projects and 909k tracked hours.
Operationally, the platform freed up roughly a week a month by eliminating manual data wrangling, and shifting the operations team from reporting to insight-partnering – helping MBB scale smoothly without additional administrative burden.
“We use Projectworks like the bible,” said Operations Director Jemima Butt. “The response from the directors is, if it’s not in Projectworks it’s not correct. It’s where we take all our data from.”
Cash remains king in uncertain markets
For engineering leaders, the enduring takeaway from recent shocks such as the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic is disciplined money management.
“The biggest lesson was that ‘cash is king’,” Orttung said. “You have to carefully look at everything in the current market: who’s staffed, utilisation, who’s on the bench, and what you need to do to make sure you’re turning a profit.”
When times are challenging or uncertain, rigorous attention to detail is key.
“It’s important to have an operating system that allows you to look at your short-term financials and forecast which projects are going to land on time – so you can manage budgets now and grow quickly when new projects come in,” he said.
What sets Projectworks apart from other professional services automation or enterprise resource planning platforms is its forward-looking capability.
“We take advantage of the whole process end-to-end and share information across it,” Orttung said.
In practice, that means the platform becomes the operational source of truth across time cards, expenses, leave, invoices and project data then turns that into actionable forecasts.
“Instead of your general ledger or accounting telling you what happened last month, we tell you what’s going to happen next month and give you the foresight to keep every project on track before it turns into a problem,” he said.
Resource management is the standout. Engineering firms choose Projectworks because it shows, at a glance, where capacity is tight today and where cliffs are forming tomorrow.
“We provide a visual look at what’s happening with your resources in the near- and-medium term,” Orttung said. At firm level, the view is colour-coded so leaders can see exactly who has hours free, who’s over billed and redeploy resources quickly.
Discover detailed insights and practical strategies from the Engineers Australia endorsed report Engineering in Australia: Built for Growth to help your consultancy navigate today’s challenges and drive sustainable growth.
