By Mark Orttung, Chief Executive Officer, Projectworks
In the Australian engineering sector, the work is flowing, but the pressure is rising. Our industry is at a defining moment and is tackling nation-building work like climate resilience projects, transport upgrades, and a massive energy transition. Billions are committed from both public and private sectors, with major agendas such as the Brisbane 2032 Olympics and Future Made in Australia lining up the pipeline.
Yet, while the opportunities are big, pipelines are moving faster, staff are stretched thin, and margins are tighter than ever.
The firms that win in this new era won’t be the ones that just work harder; they’ll be the ones that work smarter. Having led and scaled services firms, I’ve learnt that the critical difference between scrambling and scaling isn’t headcount or reputation; it’s utilising an intelligent platform that allows you to control and shift from “gut feel” to operational discipline.
You can’t manage what you can’t see
There is no shortage of demand. But fast-moving pipelines create dangerous blind spots. Too many leaders are operating without a real-time view of their capacity, margins, and project timelines. This is risking profitability and delivery of projects on time and within budget.
The era of manual, error-prone data entry and fragmented visibility must end. Firms need to unify project, people, and financial data into one cohesive system. This single source of truth provides project intelligence, the non-negotiable foundation for scalable success.
When project managers have a complete, real-time view of a project’s health, from resourcing availability to budget burn rate, they can spot and resolve issues before they escalate into crises. This transparency is vital for protecting margins on projects.
To track your core health metrics obsessively, we focus on two things:
- Gross margin (are you healthy?)
- Book-to-bill ratio (are you growing or shrinking?)
Chasing a 30 per cent company-wide gross margin and ensuring your book-to-bill stays above 1.0 allows leaders to see danger signals through the noise. Staying disciplined with these numbers allows you to see further ahead, identify red flags early, course-correct at the right time, and confidently deliver projects on time and on budget.
Win the talent war with the team you have
Considering the persistent talent and skills gaps facing the industry, maximum performance from existing teams is crucial. Effective planning means intelligently deploying the right consultants to the right projects, thereby maximising billable hours. You can’t just throw more people at the problem. Many firms run at 95 per cent utilisation just to survive, but it’s unsustainable and leads to burnout.
Growth now depends on how well you deploy the team you’ve already got. This requires tracking how your staff are being utilised. The goal isn’t to make sure your staff are logging 100 per cent billable hours. In fact, mature firms hold at 70-80 per cent. That 20-30 per cent buffer is what you should look at as your bench. It’s a competitive advantage that lets you invest in your people, grow their skills, and be ready when new work comes in. It’s how you protect your staff and build a resilient, ready-to-deploy team.
Technology can streamline this, allowing firms to quickly identify and deploy specialist skills. For example, a firm running multiple concurrent infrastructure projects must be able to instantly see who has specific expertise (e.g., structural analysis, regulatory compliance) and confirm their exact availability. Without this clarity, a single skills gap can halt project momentum and profitability.
Make technology carry the weight of admin
As firms scale, they get weighed down by reporting, admin, and coordination, and it’s almost always completed manually. Your best, most expensive engineers are wasting time on spreadsheets.
Accurate, real-time forecasting is mandatory. Leaders need to forecast revenue, resource demand, and project risk to make truly informed decisions.
You can’t grow a services firm on hustle alone. We advocate for measuring tech utilisation, which tells you how much time is being wasted on non-billable admin. Every hour your people spend wrangling spreadsheets or chasing approvals is an hour they’re not solving a complex problem for your clients. Automating this work through a project intelligence platform is the fastest way to unlock hidden capacity and let your team focus on what matters most.
Advanced Professional Services Automation (PSA) software is transforming this process. By integrating pipeline, resourcing, time tracking, and invoicing, these systems provide live reports on predictive metrics like projected budget burn and margin at project end. These early warning signals allow leaders to course-correct before a project overruns, proactively protecting profits and client relationships.
The real-world impact of unified systems
Forward-thinking firms are already proving the ROI of this shift. For example, the high-growth advisory firm MBB Group avoided the growing pains of a 277 per cent increase in headcount by implementing a single, integrated Professional Services Automation (PSA) platform. They no longer spend a week per month manually pulling data from disparate sources. Instead, they rely on live, trustworthy utilisation and financial data from a single source of truth, enabling project leads to make immediate, data-informed decisions that scale operational efficiency and profitability.
Structure over chaos
Australia’s engineering sector is at a crossroads, and the opportunities are immense, but they demand a new level of sophistication. The firms that thrive will be the ones that bring structure to the chaos.
Achieving operational excellence demands a strategic shift toward project intelligence. This means treating project data not as an administrative burden, but as a competitive asset.
The firms that win the biggest tenders and execute with the highest margins are those that leverage their historical performance data. They know precisely which projects, managers, or skill sets drove profitability, using that insight to inform their strategy and bidding process today. This intelligence allows firm leaders to proactively pivot, rapidly adapt to market shifts, and confidently bid on the most complex, high-value engagements.
Success won’t go to the biggest, but to the smartest. By moving from a reactive, spreadsheet-based approach to a proactive, data-driven strategy, firms can turn operational excellence into a sustainable competitive advantage, securing their long-term growth and profitability.
The moment to build that foundation is now. Start by measuring what matters, automating the admin, and getting your systems ready to scale.
