The Superconsultancy is Coming

As we usher in the fourth industrial revolution powered by AI and data, we are in the unique position to create the AI-powered and data-driven “Superconsultancy” that will transform our industry. While this is perhaps the most exciting time in a generation, unveiling incredible opportunity, it simultaneously presents an existential threat. Let’s explore why and how we got here. 

Historically, AEC firms must increase staff to achieve revenue growth — they need more people to deliver more projects. Therefore, the most logical business model for the AEC industry has always involved billing for time, materials, and expertise to deliver successful projects for clients. Bigger, more complex projects take more time, require specialized expertise, and involve more people, all of which are billed accordingly. That’s the way it’s always been. 

Even though the widespread advancement of technology over the past 50 years has drastically changed how the AEC industry functions, the cost-based pricing model has largely maintained its foothold. However, as AI technology becomes more integrated into AEC operations, the industry is contending with a new reality: Capacity and revenue are no longer limited by or correlated with staff levels. They can now truly be decoupled. 

The Incredible Opportunity

Firms now have the opportunity to achieve meaningful growth with AI, using advanced technologies to generate more output, value, and revenue without increasing labor costs. McKinsey & Company estimates that generative AI (GenAI) and other emerging technologies have the potential to automate work activities that consume up to 70% of an employee’s time every single day. The strategy and management consulting firm also projects that AI and automation could unlock up to $228 billion in annual value across the U.S. AEC sector by 2030.

“When we widen the aperture, we see how many possibilities emerge in a future where labor is no longer the primary constraint — opportunities for new business models, new operating models, new workforce structures, and even new competitors. It’s time to rethink what’s possible.”

Javier A. Baldor, Chief Executive Officer, BST Global

This fundamental shift in how value is created, delivered, and experienced undermines the AEC industry’s traditional business model and poses an important question: If the same work can be completed dramatically faster with fewer resources and better outcomes, is the time-and-materials business model still relevant or even sustainable?

The answer that continually emerges is that, as AI accelerates productivity, value will be driven less by effort and more by results. Simply incorporating new technologies into daily operations isn’t going to keep the AEC industry from falling behind in the age of AI. Something more fundamental needs to change along with the technology — the business model must evolve to support an entirely new operational reality. We are seeing this take shape today with a clear shift toward value-based pricing models such as lump sum. 

However, the real shift will occur with the introduction of an outcome-based business model that delivers AI-infused “Services-as-Software (SaS).” According to HFS Research, “We’re entering an era of SaS — where delivering outcomes no longer relies on traditional services. Instead, ‘services’ are delivered primarily through advanced technology, reducing human intervention, and maximizing efficiency. This isn’t just evolution. It’s a complete transformation.”

Sequoia Capital partner Julien Bek recently published a fascinating essay titled “Services: The New Software” in which he states, “The next $1T company will be a software company masquerading as a services firm.” He goes on to add, “Today’s judgement will become tomorrow’s intelligence. As AI systems accumulate proprietary data about what good judgement looks like in their domain, the frontier will shift. Copilots and autopilots will converge.”

According to the WSJ CFO Journal, a chart was unveiled at a recent Deloitte town hall showing that traditional labor-based, hourly-rate consulting work is expected to shrink significantly as a proportion of the total market over the next decade. Industry observers are also watching how some smaller consulting firms have operated with an outcome-based pricing model. For example, Newton Consulting, a management consulting firm that books roughly $250M–$300M in annual revenue, has had all of its fees tied to operational outcomes since forming in 2001. “Newton ties its fees to the delivery of agreed metrics such as reducing manufacturing waste, lowering warehousing and trucking costs, cutting down on discarded fresh produce in retail, and increasing store-conversion rates,” said Steven Phillips, managing partner at Newton.

In the future, everything will be about creating and proving valuable and quantifiable outcomes for clients. This is how we will all be held accountable by our clients. If you perform, you will prosper. If you don’t, you will become irrelevant or cease to exist in this new AI era. 

How might you approach this? Perhaps consider applying Amazon’s Working Backwards method for ideation and innovation, which starts with the end in mind. Begin by “reimagining” not only the future client experience, but also the future employee work experience that will achieve it. To do that, you must think AI-first with the goal of stripping out every single point of friction in the client and employee experiences. 

Becoming very close to your customer and understanding value from their lens is paramount to this process. Begin by asking yourself, “How can we truly understand what is extremely valuable to our client and what creates tangible and meaningful value for them?” Once you understand that, you can foster a client experience that is so valuable and resilient that you are tethered to your client and able to move beyond the project to create an insurmountable value moat.

The future of client experience in AEC will not be defined by a better project deliverable alone. It will be defined by the entire experience surrounding that deliverable — how clients engage with firms, access information, measure progress, and receive value in real time.

Furthermore, there is an opportunity to unlock entirely new commercial models. Every firm has an incredible superpower: its data. The opportunity is in harnessing it, leveraging it and, most importantly, monetizing it. Firms that are willing to reimagine what’s possible will recognize opportunities to provide data products and intelligence services that extend beyond a single project. The traditional AEC firm will become a data business powered by AI.

For example, consider how you could aggregate and anonymize your client project data and deliver it as a data product in the form of insights that are extremely valuable to your customers. Now imagine monetizing that data product as a subscription that complements your current project-based services. This opens the door to AEC leaders discovering that the project itself is no longer the only thing of value: Project-generated data can also be a value engine. Not only will these firms deliver projects more efficiently with AI, they’ll turn the resulting knowledge and data into a new source of value and sustainable revenue. They’ll then have the tools to evolve from project providers into strategic “intelligence partners.” 

Perhaps the most transformative shift will be that the workforce itself expands as digital workers, in the form of autonomous or “super” agents, assume much of the production work. In a world where AI agents become the laborers, a firm’s most valuable people may no longer be defined by output alone but by their contributions of critical thinking, creativity, emotional intelligence, and leadership. Where digital agents become the “doers,” humans will be able to lean into their roles as the thinkers, advisors, innovators, and trusted partners.

We can see these distinct areas of opportunity — data as a source of value and AI agents as workers — converge in a couple of examples from the legal world. The world’s highest-grossing law firm, Kirkland & Ellis, is investing $500 million to develop a proprietary AI platform that harnesses the “collective intelligence or brilliance” of its lawyers. This strategic approach is designed to transform how legal services are delivered by shifting the business model from billable hours to more value-based pricing.

David Fox, who helped shape Kirkland & Ellis into a top global law firm, has since launched Irving, an AI-native law firm that primarily relies on AI while employing only a handful of lawyers. In this endeavor, he’s exploring alternative business structures involving two distinct business entities — one housing the lawyers and one housing the technology. Segregating the two functions organizationally unlocks investment opportunities for the technology entity.

Similar opportunities exist for the AEC industry. Imagine a business structure that enables engineers and designers to work alongside AI agents while also enabling new funding opportunities for the technology powering those agents. 

The Existential Threat
As we welcome the incredible opportunity that AI affords, we will also see the advent of “Private Equity 2.0” as it aggressively invests in the AI/agentic-first consultancies that will upend the traditional AEC firm. Led by a core team of licensed industry domain experts, these firms will completely reimagine project delivery, employing QA/QC specialists to ensure a human is in the loop to sign off on design reviews, code compliance, and accountability for thousands of agents. 

We will also see a wave of mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships led by technology companies like Accenture, Amazon, and Anthropic, to name a few. Marrying their AI and Big Data expertise with deep AEC industry engineering domain experience, these tech giants will drive significant market disruption at scale. We’re already seeing this in partnerships like the one Freshfields recently announced, wherein the UK “magic circle” firm will help Anthropic build specialist AI tools that could later be sold to rival law firms. The alliance gives Freshfields early access to future Anthropic models and tools.

Industry-wide disruption by technology companies isn’t the only threat to AEC firms in an AI-powered future. When AI technologies and innovations are entering the market at break-neck speed, the greatest threat of all is simply standing still. At this critical juncture, every firm should instead be focused on accelerating digital transformation to fully embrace the potential that AI brings. Even firms that are experimenting with low-risk, automation-focused pilots are merely testing the waters from the edge — gaining surface-level efficiencies while reducing AI to nothing more than an interesting tool. To avoid becoming obsolete, AEC leaders and their firms must lean in now, transforming operations through meaningful AI integration and embracing new business models. 

The Path Forward 

With all of this to consider, it’s crucial to understand that the future of work is about more than doing the same things faster. It’s about reimagining how work is created, delivered, and valued. The AEC firms that thrive will do more than adopt AI — they’ll rethink their entire business around the opportunities and “experiences” that AI creates for clients and employees. 

The vast capacity for AI to shape the AEC firm of the future is why research initiatives like this and BST Global’s AI + Data Survey are so important. They’re vital to gaining a deeper understanding of the immense opportunity and potential threat that AI brings to our industry. The resulting reports underscore the need to harness AI’s potential and examine the strategic business implications of AI integration, different types of AI and their applications for AEC, and AI’s impact on the future of the industry.

Now is the time to reinvent yourself — while we are at historic levels of prosperity — and not be reactive to the AI-first and native “Superconsultancy” that is coming. The prize waiting for these vanguard leaders of tomorrow is the opportunity to achieve next-level operational performance as they change the world. The opportunity before us truly is for all, whether you are a 30-, 300- or 3,000-person consultancy. Seize it.