AEC THRIVE
The Growth, Profit & Success Summit for AEC Firm Leaders. Save $600 when you register now!
AEC THRIVE brings together key decisionmakers for connection and collaboration for business strategies that drive lasting success.
ABOUT AEC THRIVE
Transforming Strategy. Elevating Performance.
AEC THRIVE is your unique opportunity to learn what other firms are doing right now to vault to the next level of profit and performance as the business climate continues to evolve.
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Executive Peers
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Expert Speakers
Immersive Days
3 Reasons AEC THRIVE is Must-Attend
AEC THRIVE brings together architecture and engineering firm decision-makers and senior leaders ready to spark growth, profitability, and performance. Ideal for CEOs, Presidents and VPs, Managing Principals, CFOs, and any executive driving business strategy and long-term success.
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Fresh Ideas
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Peer Networking
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Explosive Results
MEET OUR 2026
Keynote Speakers
Journey to 2040: Leading the Future of Your Industry
Leading AEC Business Futurist
World renowned futurist Nikki Greenberg equips AEC leaders to proactively shape their organization’s future by navigating the major forces reshaping every industry, including AI, generational shifts, and workplace evolution. Drawing on her experience leading the digital transformation of a $70 Billion organization, Nikki provides practical tools and a forward thinking framework to embrace change, harness emerging technologies, and accelerate success. Delivered in her light hearted, dynamic, and entertaining style, this keynote blends inspiration, motivation, and practical insight on how to become future ready today.
Your Firm Doesn’t Have a Strategy Problem—You Have a Leadership Problem
Most AEC firms believe they need better strategy, more data, or new technology to improve performance. That’s not the problem. The problem is that leadership behavior—and the way decisions are made—hasn’t kept pace with the complexity of the business. And it’s costing firms growth, margin, and control. Across the moments that matter most—how firms select pursuits, price risk, respond to margin pressure, and manage delivery—decisions are often inconsistent, slow, and overly dependent on individual experience. Leadership teams may be aligned on strategy, but they are not aligned in how decisions are made and executed across the firm. The result?
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Organizations that look strong on paper… but behave differently in practice.
Margins erode without warning. Backlog quality varies by office. Similar projects deliver different outcomes depending on who is leading them.
Trilon Group’s Kat Nelson Galke takes a deliberately contrarian stance:
- More data is not improving your performance
- Best practices are not creating differentiation
- AI will not fix your firm
- Leadership behavior—not technology—is the constraint
As access to data and AI accelerates, the gap between insight and action is becoming more visible—and more costly. The firms that outperform will not be those with the best strategies, but those that rethink how leaders make decisions, own outcomes, and operate consistently at scale. This session focuses on where firms are getting stuck between insight and action—and what leaders must change to close that gap.
- How to identify the critical decisions that actually drive growth, margin, and risk
- Where leadership behavior is creating inconsistency across teams and offices
- How to increase decision speed and quality without increasing exposure
- A practical approach to align leaders on how decisions are made—not just what the strategy is
- How to turn strategy, data, and AI into measurable performance outcomes
AEC Growth Power Play: Winning the Work You’re Not Supposed to Win
Great firms aren’t just built on the safe wins. Every leading AEC firm has that inflection point that redefined their trajectory. The moment that they landed the big project that was even bigger than the firm's resume could justify. In today’s hyper-competitive environment, being qualified is no longer enough land the big wins (and even some of the small ones). Selection committees are flooded with capable firms, and too many teams still walk into interviews hoping their experience will speak for itself. It won’t. If you want to win larger, more strategic work, you must rethink how you show up in the project interview. That’s where decisions are made and that's where you need to stand out.
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This keynote reveals a disciplined approach to turning the interview into a true competitive advantage. Drawing from Tim’s 37-year career building a 400-person firm with a 50% interview win rate (and insights shared in his latest book – Winning Work), you learn:
- How to Control the Narrative and give selection committees a clear reason to choose you
- How Firms Win “Unwinnable” Projects and why others lose work they should have secured
- How to Deliver a Message That Sticks long after the shortlist presentations end
This isn’t about better presentations. It’s about changing how you compete…and winning the work you actually want.
Alignment by Design: Why the Firms That Last Stop Chasing Growth
The architecture and engineering industry has long celebrated growth as the primary proof of firm success — rising revenue, expanding headcounts, new offices, bigger backlogs. But after decades of advising and leading AEC firms, and completing a doctoral study of consistently high-performing firms, Michael arrived at a counterintuitive finding: the firms best positioned for enduring success are rarely the ones most focused on growth itself.
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In this keynote, Matthews will present the research-based framework from his forthcoming book, Alignment by Design, revealing that sustained performance in professional services firms emerges not from optimizing any single metric, but from the coherence of five interconnected organizational systems — values and mission, governance, structure, leadership, and culture.
When these components reinforce one another, professionals collaborate more effectively, leaders develop more naturally, client relationships deepen, and the firm builds resilience that outlasts market cycles and ownership transitions.
Attendees will leave with a practical diagnostic lens for examining whether their own firm’s internal systems are working together — or quietly working against one another — and a clearer understanding of why alignment, not growth, is the strategy that separates firms that thrive from firms that simply expand.
Get ready to explore the breakthroughs and big ideas shaping AEC THRIVE
CHOOSE YOUR PASS
Choose the registration that fits your goals
Get access to world-class content, exclusive sessions, and valuable networking — all in one place.
Group Savings
$1495
/Each Additional Registrant
Save $500 per additional attendee
Bring your team and multiply your firm’s takeaways.
- Bring your key team members
- First registration full price
- Each additional saves $500
- Must register in one transaction
Early Bird
$1995
/Registrant
Lock in the lowest rate for the main AEC THRIVE before prices rise. Registration includes all sessions, breakfasts, lunches, breaks and receptions.
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Early Bird Discount Ends:
June 21, 2026
- Register now for the lowest rate
- Limited-time offer
- Full price: $2,595
Save $600!
Optional Workshop
+$995
/Registrant
AEC Executive Workshop delivers a wealth of action-oriented ideas to rethink and energize your leadership training and succession strategy.
- Limited spots available!
- Identify high-potential leaders
- Build a coaching culture
- Strengthen your succession pipeline
The Countdown Has Begun!
Don’t Miss the Growth Profit & Success Summit of the Year
Join your AEC peers in Scottsdale for three powerful days of networking, strategy, and fresh approaches to improving business performance.
Omni Scottsdale Resort & Spa
VENUE & LOCATION
Where AEC's brightest minds gather, The Omni Scottsdale Resort & Spa at Montelucia
AEC THRIVE is coming to Omni Scottsdale Resort & Spa at Montelucia — nestled at the base of Camelback Mountain in Scottdale, AZ. It’s the perfect setting to relax, reset, and recharge in a location that’s as inspiring as the conference itself.
- Location: Scottsdale, AZ
- Date: October 20–23, 2026
- Room discount deadline: 9/7/2026
Attendee Testimonials
Contact Us
- 617-965-0055
- education@psmj.com
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10 Midland Avenue
Newton, MA 02458