Insights Moving the Industry Forward: ACEC Research Institute Releases 2025–2026 Achievement Report
Three years ago, engineering firm leaders were asking whether artificial intelligence mattered to their business. Today they are asking where to start, how fast to move, and what they risk by waiting. That shift reflects an industry with access to rigorous, independent research, and the ACEC Research Institute has been at the center of it.
The Institute today released its 2025–2026 Achievement Report, Insights Moving the Industry Forward. The report documents a year in which Institute research expanded in scope, reached new audiences, and increasingly shaped the decisions of firm leaders, infrastructure owners, and policymakers.
Defining the firm of the future
The Institute’s Firm of the Future series grew from a study of AI adoption into a broader framework for how engineering firms will operate. Workforce of the Future, released at the 2025 ACEC Fall Conference in San Diego, examined how firms can attract, develop, and retain the talent needed to meet demand. Redefining the Firm: Talent, Technology, and Transformation, developed with futurist Mike Walsh and released at the 2026 ACEC Annual Convention and Legislative Summit, gives leaders a strategic roadmap for where value is created and how work is structured in an increasingly digital ecosystem.
Economic intelligence leaders can act on
While Firm of the Future looked ahead, the Institute’s economic research helped leaders manage the present. Quarterly Engineering Business Sentiment studies and live State of the Engineering Economy roundtables let executives benchmark their outlook against peers. When tariffs, inflation, and recession concerns intensified, special Business Climate Lightning Polls delivered a real-time read on how firms were responding, while the 2025 Economic Assessment & Forecast supplied the long-range view. The Economic Assessment & Forecast findings also inform the Institute’s state-by-state impact map, which ACEC Member Organizations use to show legislators the industry’s contribution to jobs, wages, taxes, and GDP.
Guidance for a fast-growing delivery model
With funding from The Charles Pankow Foundation and DBIA, the Institute’s Progressive Design-Build Implementation study analyzed high-performing and challenged projects. It found that when validation, governance, and commercial structures are in place, Progressive Design-Build shows consistently strong schedule performance and points to potential cost savings.
Research in the rooms where decisions are made
The report’s central theme is reach. In July 2025, Institute Chair Steve Lefton was appointed one of 12 members of the U.S. Department of Transportation Advisory Board. Executive Director Daphne Bryant presented Institute findings to roughly 130 state transportation, firms, and contracting representatives at the NASTO Summer Conference. Institute research was presented at DBIA conferences, the AIA Conference on Architecture & Design, and ACEC events nationwide, and it traveled internationally to ACE New Zealand and ACEC Canada. The Institute’s work also was featured in several trade outlets, including ENR, Informed Infrastructure, and Infrastructure Global.
Opening doors for the next generation
The Institute awarded more than 100 scholarships this year, and the 2026 class set another participation record. Those awards are funded by more than $800,000 in designated gifts from firms, organizations, foundations, and individuals, separate from the Institute’s research funding.
Stewardship donors can count on
Donor support funded $1.2 million in research over the past year, and 87 cents of every dollar went directly to mission-driven work. The report recognizes the firms, Member Organizations, and individuals whose contributions make that work possible.
Read the report and get involved
Read the full 2025–2026 Achievement Report here. To support the research and scholarships that keep engineering firms ahead of what’s next, visit the Institute here.
