Zonda - Resource Library

This On Demand CEU is a recorded presentation from a previously live webinar event. Projects are the core of your architecture firm. Not only do they generate profits, but they are also at the center of your firm’s business operations. As such, doing everything you can to ensure their success should be one of your top priorities.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) track project success by measuring how your projects (or team, clients, and so on) are performing. Because each architecture firm has different goals and ways of working, your vital KPIs will vary from project to project.

Effective KPIs, regardless of project type, are:

*Well-defined and quantifiable
*Communicated thoroughly to every employee
*Crucial measurements for tracking the progress of your goals
*Applicable to your firm and industry

Within the world of project performance and finance, certain KPIs should always be used to monitor and improve your success.

This On Demand CEU is a recorded presentation from a previously live webinar event. Being a brilliant architect rarely translates into having a successful business. With all the years of education and training to make us experts in our profession, the skills needed to have a successful business were conveniently overlooked. This webinar will fill the void and provide you with the business management highlights that every firm needs to apply to achieve their full potential.

In this session, we will learn the fundamentals of all successful AE firms and provide the basis for making well-grounded business decisions. We will learn how firms can transition from being professionals providing services, to highly tuned businesses that can identify the needs of the marketplace and create services and products that are appropriately priced and yield consistent and greater profits.

Rather than seeking out new projects that merely build upon your current skills, you will start from a business-thinking mindset, where processes that are critical to building a thriving firm are examined and constituted in your firm. We will explore the importance of data within an architect firm and demonstrate how careful collection and interpretation can lead your firm into more exciting and profitable territory.

This On Demand CEU is a recorded presentation from a previously live webinar event. This course explores how using concrete masonry units (CMU) in the built environment provides an integrated approach to climate-responsive design by simultaneously addressing three critical sustainability strategies: resilience, operational energy use, and embodied carbon reduction. Participants will examine how CMU construction offers inherent solutions to modern building challenges, from natural disasters and extreme weather events to energy conservation and carbon footprint reduction. The course demonstrates that CMU structures perform beyond code requirements without additional measures, providing durable, cost-effective buildings that support community resilience while contributing to low embodied carbon goals.

This On Demand CEU is a recorded presentation from a previously live webinar event. Are you tired of watching your fees shrink as your expertise grows? Does it feel like the better you get at architecture, the less money you make per project? You're not alone—and you're not stuck.

This webinar challenges the conventional wisdom of hourly and percentage-based fees that most AE firms have been trained to follow. This interactive webinar reveals a more powerful approach to pricing that aligns with the actual value you create for clients, not just the time you spend or the construction costs you influence.

In this 50-minute session, you'll discover why traditional pricing models punish efficiency and reward inefficiency—and learn a proven framework for breaking free from the "efficiency penalty" that's keeping your firm trapped in a race to the bottom. Whether you're a firm owner looking to improve margins, a principal tired of competing on price, or an architect planning to start your own practice, this webinar will fundamentally change how you think about your value and your fees.

This On Demand CEU is a recorded presentation from a previously live webinar event. In today’s evolving architectural landscape, firms face increasing pressure from economic volatility, talent retention challenges, and shifting client expectations. This webinar explores how benchmarking empowers architecture leaders to meet these challenges with clarity and confidence.

We’ll walk through key findings from the newly released 2025 Architecture Benchmarking Report, built on real performance data from over 2,000 A&E firms and 46,000 active users. You’ll learn how firms are setting meaningful performance targets, tracking progress, and using benchmarking to guide smarter, faster decisions.

With two years of data, we’ll also explore emerging trends and how leading firms are using insights from tools like BQE CORE to drive measurable results, including higher revenue per FTE, increased profit percentage, and year-over-year revenue growth. Whether your goal is to improve operational efficiency, support long-term planning, or gain a competitive edge, this session will give you a practical framework for applying benchmarking in your own firm.

This On Demand CEU is a recorded presentation from a previously live webinar event. Is your architecture firm operating at peak efficiency, or are you constantly putting out fires? Many firms struggle with inconsistent business development, project bottlenecks, financial uncertainty, and disorganized operations—often without realizing the root cause is a lack of business maturity.

In this webinar, gain a clear understanding of where your firm stands today and, more importantly, the specific steps you can take to level up your business processes, improve efficiency, and drive sustainable profitability. We explore practical, real-world strategies for moving from reactive to proactive firm management, ensuring you’re not just delivering great designs, but also running a thriving, resilient business. Whether you’re a principal, partner, or senior leader in an architecture firm, this session will equip you with the actionable insights needed to build a more predictable, scalable, and profitable practice.

This On Demand CEU is a recorded presentation from a previously live webinar event. Artificial intelligence is moving beyond isolated tools and generative outputs. The next phase is agentic: systems that reason across data, coordinate work, and act alongside human teams. This transformation will be both beneficial and disruptive. Productivity will increase. Many new roles will emerge. Expectations will change.

For architecture and engineering firms, this shift reshapes the entire project lifecycle: planning, staffing, forecasting, design coordination, risk detection, and delivery. AI is becoming the connective layer across disciplines, while robotics and new delivery technologies close long-standing gaps between design and construction.

In this session, we take a practical, wide-angle view of what an AI-enabled, agentic A&E firm could look like. We will discuss specific products, real-world applications, and emerging platforms, not to promote tools, but to ground the conversation in practical reality. The focus is on how AI reshapes workflows, roles, decision-making, and firm structure and how to prepare intentionally.

This On Demand CEU is a recorded presentation from a previously live webinar event. Wood, in its natural state, is a highly sustainable material. But there are many factors that can either diminish or improve its sustainability, including how and where it’s harvested, how end products are treated and finished, and the lifecycle of the material. This course will explore the sustainability of wood wall and ceiling systems, and considerations for specifying wood products that are sustainably sourced.

We will cover different manufacturing and treatment processes, and environmental factors affecting wood, its lifecycle, reuse, and salvageability. We will also discuss applications for wood ceilings and walls, certifications available for projects specifying these materials, and insight into the world of sustainable wood systems.

This On Demand CEU is a recorded presentation from a previously live webinar event. Reusing existing buildings is one of the most effective strategies architects have to reduce embodied carbon and structural steel plays a critical role in making reuse viable, adaptable, and measurable. This course examines how steel supports circular design strategies that extend building life, enable program change, and reduce carbon impacts beyond end-of-life recycling.

Using whole-building life-cycle assessment as a framework, the session explores how retaining and adapting steel structures compares to new construction. Case studies demonstrate how architects leveraged existing steel frames, selective reinforcement, and targeted interventions to achieve substantial embodied carbon savings while delivering new uses, density, and performance. The course emphasizes actionable design decisions architects can make early to preserve value, reduce waste, and document carbon outcomes.