Business developmentforChicago AEC firms.
BD-AEC embeds a business development department for Chicago architecture, engineering, and construction firms. Senior leadership, market intelligence, creative capacity, and consistent execution give your principals a team behind their next stage of growth.
Outsourced growth infrastructure
A department behind your growth
Leadership, intelligence, creative capacity, and follow-through, working together as part of your firm.
01
Strategy
Choose the work worth pursuing. Market intelligence and Creative Mapping connect your strengths with the right buyers, partners, and opportunities.
02
Creativity
Give buyers a reason to remember you. Positioning, story, and proposals turn technical expertise into a clear case for choosing your firm.
03
Execution
Keep the work moving. Outreach, relationships, pursuit coordination, and regular reviews turn decisions into a repeatable business development practice. Kinetic Rebalance adjusts the effort as evidence changes, including doing less.
Strategy + Creativity + Execution = Growth
The strategy + creativity principle comes from our partners at BLDG Brands. BD-AEC adds execution.
Scott leads the relationship as CEO and Strategic Partner. The department brings the capacity around him. Your principals stay involved in technical decisions and key relationships; we establish the rhythm and carry the work forward together.
Explore the embedded departmentThe Chicago market
Who buys design and construction here
Chicago is the largest and deepest AEC market in the Midwest, and that scale cuts both ways. About 3,105 design and construction firms compete here, including 1,437 engineering firms, all chasing a pipeline dominated by a handful of enormous institutional and public owners.
Chicago buys design and construction at a scale nothing else in the region touches. Healthcare leads: UChicago Medicine is building the city's first freestanding cancer hospital, an $815 million pavilion in Hyde Park; Northwestern Medicine is planning a downtown tower in Streeterville that could approach a billion dollars; Rush is mid-decade on its roughly $1 billion Rush Transformation; and Advocate Health Care broke ground in 2026 on a new South Side hospital. Add the public heavyweights, the O'Hare 21 terminal program run by the Chicago Department of Aviation, the CTA's $5.7 billion Red Line Extension, the Illinois Tollway's Move Illinois plan, and MWRD's Deep Tunnel, plus a data center boom in Elk Grove Village and DeKalb and megasites like Related Midwest's The 78 and the Quantum Shore campus on the old South Works site. Few markets in the country have this much capital in play at once.
It is also one of the most entrenched AEC towns anywhere, not an open field. Some of the largest builders in the country are headquartered here, Walsh Group and Clayco among them, alongside deep local benches like Power Construction, Pepper, and James McHugh, and design giants born in this city, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Perkins&Will, and CannonDesign. The same owners, program managers, and primes recur on job after job, and selection runs on reputation and trust, not the low number from a firm nobody knows. Being new to Chicago is not enough; you have to be known to the people who decide.
Chicago puts smaller firms alongside national primes and established local competitors. Choosing the right teams and pursuits takes research, clear positioning, and patient relationship work. BD-AEC brings strategy, creativity, and execution together in an embedded department, connecting market intelligence with relationships, positioning, and pursuit support. Your principals contribute the technical judgment; our team helps carry the work forward.
U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns (NAICS 5413, 2022)
Healthcare systems
Northwestern Medicine's planned Streeterville tower, UChicago Medicine's $815M freestanding cancer hospital, Rush's roughly $1B Rush Transformation, Advocate Health Care's new South Side hospital, Endeavor Health, Cook County Health, and Lurie Children's.
Aviation & transit
The Chicago Department of Aviation's O'Hare 21 terminal program, including the $1.3B new Concourse D, plus the CTA's $5.7B Red Line Extension, the Red and Purple Modernization program, Metra, and Midway.
Public infrastructure
IDOT District 1, the Illinois Tollway's Move Illinois program and its $4B Central Tri-State (I-294) rebuild, CDOT, and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District's Deep Tunnel and reservoir program.
Data centers & megaprojects
The Elk Grove Village and DeKalb data center market, including Meta's DeKalb campus and Prime ORD, plus Related Midwest's The 78, the Quantum Shore campus on the former South Works site, and the completed Obama Presidential Center.
Corporate, higher ed & homegrown primes
HQ owners like McDonald's, United Airlines, and AbbVie in North Chicago; the University of Chicago, Northwestern with its new $850M Ryan Field, UIC, and IIT; and locally headquartered primes like Walsh Group, Clayco, and SOM who hold the relationships nationals chase.
RFPs and bids
Where Chicago architecture and engineering work gets advertised
These are the agencies and institutions that put architecture and engineering work out to bid in Chicago, and the portals where they post it. Bookmark them. Winning the work is a different job from finding it, and finding it is the part you can do yourself.
City of Chicago Department of Procurement Services
Contracting authority for every City department, including the Chicago Department of Transportation, the Department of Water Management, and the Chicago Department of Aviation for O'Hare and Midway; issues architecture and engineering RFPs, qualifications-only RFQs on federally funded work, and Master Consulting Agreements drawn down by task order.
Public Building Commission of Chicago
Designs and builds for Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Park District, City Colleges of Chicago, Chicago Public Library, the Police and Fire departments, CTA and MWRD; appoints Architect of Record, Design Architect and Program Architect from its rolling LIQ database and also issues design-build RFPs.
Illinois Department of Transportation, Region One / District One
Phase I, Phase II and Phase III highway engineering across the Chicago region out of its District One office at 201 West Center Court, Schaumburg, including districtwide agreements that embed consultant traffic engineers, technicians and administrative staff in District offices.
Illinois State Toll Highway Authority
Planning, design and construction engineering across the Tollway system, advertised through its Professional Services Bulletin under Qualifications Based Selection, with a 20 percent D/M/WBE participation goal and a selection committee drawn from the Tollway, IDOT and the Illinois Society of Professional Engineers.
Cook County Government, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer
County facilities, courthouses and asset management projects, including construction manager at risk packages such as the current facade and basement renovation of the County Building at 118 North Clark.
Chicago Transit Authority
Rail and bus capital work; posts Invitations for Bids, RFPs and Letters of Interest and Qualifications (LIQs) through its Bonfire Contract Opportunities Portal, with every opportunity also advertised in the Chicago Tribune classified section.
Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago
Wastewater treatment plants, tunnels and stormwater infrastructure across Cook County; advertises contracts and RFPs on its own Contract Announcements board with submissions uploaded through the Euna portal, and keeps a standing Engineering Consultant Resume Submittal Form.
Where solicitations are posted
How selection works here
Illinois splits architecture and engineering selection by who is buying, and the split is the whole game in Chicago. State agencies including IDOT and the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority are bound to Qualifications Based Selection by 30 ILCS 535, which forbids seeking any measure of compensation before firms are ranked, and both gate entry identically: you must hold IDOT consultant prequalification, with the Statement of Experience and Financial Condition renewed annually through EPAS, before you can file a Statement of Interest on IDOT's Professional Transportation Bulletin or the Tollway's Professional Services Bulletin, and the cycle is fast (PTB 220 published April 30, 2026, SOIs due May 21, selection July 15). The parallel Local Government Professional Services Selection Act (50 ILCS 510) never reaches the metro's two largest local buyers, because it defines a political subdivision as a school district or a unit of local government under 3,000,000 inhabitants excluding home rule units, which writes out both home rule Chicago and Cook County, so the City procures city-funded architecture and engineering through price-inclusive RFPs and reserves qualifications-only RFQs for federally funded architecture and engineering work, usually awarding a Master Consulting Agreement pool that is then fed by task orders. The practical doors are non-price and standing: the Public Building Commission accepts Letters of Interest and Qualifications on a rolling basis into its Architect of Record database, Chicago Public Schools keeps an Architect Engineers prequalified pool, Cook County, CTA and CPS all publish through Bonfire, and Chicago's MBE/WBE goals on non-construction contracts are 25 percent and 5 percent under MCC 2-92-430 (versus 26 and 6 on construction), with a Target Market program that reserves some professional services solicitations, architecture and engineering explicitly included, for certified MBE and WBE primes.
The Chicago bid watchlist
Finding the work is a job in itself. Once a quarter we send this page's market to your inbox: new federal awards in the Chicago metro, buyer moves, and portal changes. No pitch, just the market.
Email scott@bd-aec.com with the subject "Chicago bid watchlist" and we'll add you.
Federal market
Federal AEC spending in Chicago
Federal agencies obligated $295M for architecture, engineering, and construction work in the Chicago metro over the last twelve months. That is a large enough channel to build a practice around, and the firms below are already positioned in it.
Obligated, 12 months
$295M
Across the 13-county Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN area.
Largest buyer
Department of Defense
$137M of the total.
Firms winning it
- Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation · $106M
- Ameritech Contracting LLC · $29M
- Troop Contracting Inc · $15M
- Blue Pacific II JV LLC · $15M
Federal prime contract awards, USASpending.gov, twelve months to August 2026. Federal work is one slice of this market and excludes state, municipal, institutional, and private owners.
By discipline
BD-AEC in Chicago, by discipline
We embed a coordinated BD department for Chicago AEC firms. We represent one firm per discipline, project type, and market. Open your discipline’s Chicago page on the main site for the local picture.
Civil Engineering
Chicago business development for civil engineering firms.
Structural Engineering
Chicago business development for structural engineering firms.
Architecture
Chicago business development for architecture firms.
Land Surveying & Geospatial
Chicago business development for land surveying & geospatial firms.
Landscape Architecture
Chicago business development for landscape architecture firms.
Construction Management
Chicago business development for construction management firms.
Transportation & Traffic Engineering
Chicago business development for transportation & traffic engineering firms.
Testing & Special Inspection
Chicago business development for testing & special inspection firms.
Why us, here
An embedded BD department for Chicago
Chicago is one of the select major markets BD-AEC takes on beyond its core, and it is exactly the kind of market where an embedded BD department earns its keep. This is a huge, crowded, relationship-bound field where the same health-system facilities directors, agency program managers, and homegrown primes decide who wins. Principals bring technical credibility and key relationships; a coordinated team adds the research, creative capacity, and follow-through that those relationships need. We focus that capacity on the work your firm is best equipped to win.
By policy, BD-AEC represents one firm per discipline, project type, and market, an ethical line that protects every client's pipeline. For a Chicago firm, that means an exclusive BD partner who will never walk your relationships across the street to a competitor chasing the same hospital, airport, or transit work. In a market this competitive, that exclusivity is the whole point.
Questions
Straight answers
Does BD-AEC work the Chicago market?
Yes, as one of the select major markets we take on beyond our core. We won't pretend Scott is embedded in Chicago the way he is closer to home, and we won't oversell local ties we don't have. What we bring is an embedded BD department that runs your pipeline alongside your principals, building the owner, agency, and prime relationships that decide Chicago work.
What kind of AEC firms do you represent in Chicago?
Principal-led architecture, engineering, construction, and specialty firms, typically $500K to $20M in annual revenue, that need a more consistent growth function. We bring leadership, intelligence, creative capacity, and execution around the principals. By policy, we represent one firm per discipline, project type, and market, so we don't represent competing interests.
How is an embedded BD department different from hiring a BD director?
A strong internal hire can be the right choice when you have the budget, support, and work to sustain the role. BD-AEC brings a coordinated function: senior leadership, market intelligence, positioning, proposals and SOQs, relationships, and execution. If you're looking for fractional business development, this is a department model with capacity around the leader. We still need onboarding, access to your expertise, and your principals' participation in key decisions.
Chicago is huge and crowded with national primes and homegrown giants. Can a smaller firm really compete?
Yes, but not by underbidding strangers. The owners here hire on reputation and relationships, and giants like Walsh, Clayco, and SOM already own those. A smaller firm competes by being positioned as the known, trusted name on the right teams for the right work, which is precisely what a coordinated BD team does. We don't chase everything; we focus your firm where it can actually win and build the relationships to get you there.
How do we start?
Tell us about your firm and your market using the form below. Scott will respond within one business day to set up a discovery call, and he'll tell you honestly whether your discipline and market are open.
Your next move
Build your next chapter in Chicago.
Tell us where you want your firm to go and what's getting in the way. We'll look at your market, your current capacity, and whether an embedded BD department is the right fit.
Scott Mann
CEO | Strategic Partner
Scott will respond within one business day. Your first conversation covers your goals, availability in your discipline and market, and a practical next step.
Let's talk about your firm
A few details help Scott prepare for a useful conversation.
This requests a conversation. Scott will follow up to arrange a time. How we use your information.