What is the total amount of I.T. spending by small and midsize A/E/C
(architecture, engineering, and construction) companies, broken down
in a quarterly basis(if you can't find quarterly numbers I'll take
annual numbers), over the past five years?

If you are unable to find this information, then what is the total
amount of IT spending (or software spending), broken down in a
quarterly bais (if you can't find quarterly numbers I'll take annual
numbers), for the past
five years for all A/E/C companies, regardless of realtive size?

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Request for Question Clarification by omnivorous-ga on 31 Mar 2004 09:33 PST

MTracy --

I know that IT spending numbers are available for 5 years on
"construction and engineering" firms.  Having been in the IT industry
for a long time, I know of no updates that are quarterly: semi-annual
reviews are about the best that are done and public numbers are
generally only available once a year.  (Of course clients of the major
research companies get renewed survey data at mid-year.)

If this is acceptable, I'll be able to post an answer.  In the
meantime, I'll looks to see what information is available on A/E/C
spending by company size: it's quite possible that one of the A/E/C
exhibition companies has done some studies, as it's a necessary tool
for them to get computer & software firms to buy space.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

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Clarification of Question by mtracy69-ga on 31 Mar 2004 11:40 PST

semi anual numbers over the past five years are acceptable... and I
would be VERY happy to also receive numbers for small and midsize
firms as well as architecture firms as well....

Thank you so much for your help and your timely response.  Also, if
you need to talk directly with me to clarify the question... feel
free.  I am trying to get this information to finish a VC presentation
tomorrow and I very very very much appreciate your help in this
matter.

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Clarification of Question by mtracy69-ga on 31 Mar 2004 12:14 PST

If you are able to successfully obtain these numbers, I might be
interested in doing a second paid search... if possible let me know
how feasible you think it would be to find information about % of
total dollar volume of work done by small and midsize A/E/C companies
relative to large companies.

Basically what I am looking to discover is the extent to which small
and midsize A/E/C companies are being pushed out of the market place
by larger companies... and if their % of spending is increasing as
they attempt to compete with larger companies...

MTracy69 --

Knowing that you have a VC presentation tomorrow, I'm going to do
something that Google Answers and researchers hate to do -- provide
you with a partial answer.  The data that's available is excellent;
with a long track record; and will point you to other resources that
you may wish to use as you develop your business plan.  The other
resources are market studies that may cost several thousand dollars,
but the faster I get what's available in the public domain to you the
better you'll be.

So here's an answer to the core of your question -- and I'm still
seeking additional AEC data based on firm size.

I noted your thesis with interest: last summer I consulted for a
Chicago construction company that was using continual process
improvement techniques -- along with aggressive IT spending -- to
differentiate themselves from competition in a pretty traditional
business.  They'd developed the ability to process virtually all
documents electronically and had even given banks and financing
authorities the ability to see video of key aspects of a project.  But
enough of that.


IT SPENDING TRENDS
===================

I've done a number of IT spending analyses over the years, and have
historical numbers for 2000-2002 in this Google Answer:
"Industry Benchmark for IT Spending" (May 5, 2003)
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=199713

Industry spending is tracked by at least 4 firms in the IT market
research industry -- IDC, Gartner Group, Meta Group and Hackett
Benchmarking.  However, the company that's been most open with its
numbers annually has been Meta Group, which uses its Metricnet to
track various aspects of IT spending.  The site below is a
registration site and requires some survey participation to acquire
some of the summary reports, but is generally very worthwhile:
Meta Group
Metricnet
http://www.metricnet.com

But the Meta Group annually has done presentations that they've made
publicly available, which give fine overviews by industry.  It allows
us to build a 5-year trend for spending in the "Construction &
Engineering" category:


The most-recent data's in this on various industries' IT spending (see
in particular pages 14-20).

Construction & Engineering -- IT spending as a % of Revenues
2000: 1.55%
2001: 2.03%
2002: 1.43%
2003:  1.37%
2004 (est.): 1.41%

Note that the 3% increase in C&E spending is large in terms of overall
IT spending increases, which are expected to be up only 1% in 2004. 
The same Meta study indicates that C&E IT spending is $63,000 per
active large project.

Meta Group
"Worldwide IT Benchmark Service" (Nov. 13, 2003)
http://128.121.222.187/spend/MeasuringUp.pdf

Meta Group's industry-specific splits for Construction & Engineering
are available in this particular report, which isn't priced
independently on the web page:
Meta Group
http://www.metagroup.com/us/displayArticle.do?oid=34811

A surprise to me was that some month-to-month data is now being
gathered.  This may be part of Meta Group's project with MIT on IT
portfolio spending:
"IT Budget as a Percent of Gross Revenue -- (last 12 months)" (February, 2004)
http://128.121.222.187/spend/indexnew.html#I

Google search strategy:
"IT spending" + "Meta Group"
"IT spending" + "by industry"
"IT spending" + AEC

I'll continue to research what's available for A/E/C spending, as I
have a couple of other data sources that I think may be valuable. 
I'll post any additional information that I can find by 4 p.m. PST so
that you have the maximum time to analyze what's available.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

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Request for Answer Clarification by mtracy69-ga on 31 Mar 2004 13:50 PST

Very much appreciate your response, this is a very good starting point
for us.  For what it's worth (btw) our presentation is actually for a
peer-to-peer project management system enabling smaller companies to
access best in class managment through a simple email account... also
will allow file sharing and resource pooling.  Key information we are
looking for is to #1 put a current IT dollar figure to actual spending
that has a billion in it somewhere... for whatever reason VCs get
upset if they don't see a billion somewhere. After that we are looking
to #2 show small firms are getting squeezed by larger and #3 that they
are also having to spend more money on software to survive...

any additional info you can provide to point us in the right direction
is greatly appreciated.  Thank you so much for your help.

Matthew Tracy
mtracy69@hotmail.com

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Clarification of Answer by omnivorous-ga on 31 Mar 2004 14:08 PST

MTracy69 --

Here are a couple of valuable resources that aren't expensive.  The
second one, in particular, looks as if it has the kind of detail that
may be helpful to you -- and it appears that you could get a copy by
tomorrow, so I'm posting this even as I continue looking for more
details.

Engineering News-Record, the McGraw-Hill publication, has periodically
published summaries from studies done by the A/E/C consulting firm,
ZweigWhite.  The consultants publish annual studies of A/E/C cost
structures.  The 2004 study includes IT costs and is only $275:
ZweigWhite
"2004 Operating Expenses Survey"
http://www.zweigwhite.com/cgi-local/SoftCart.exe/bookstore/p-svexp04.asp?L+aa0019820+hsyy3540F1502Aff994299+1080789903#description

They've also done a specific report on IT expenses within A/E/C firms,
also priced at $275:
"2003 Information Technology & E-Business Survey"
http://www.zweigwhite.com/cgi-local/SoftCart.exe/bookstore/p-svinf03.asp?L+aa0019820+nkfg3424F1502Aff7a997a+1080791047

The following information is largely anecdotal, but provides a good
estimate of the A/E/C industry size:
VAR Business
"Constructing an ASP Foundation" (Gross, April 27, 2001)
http://www.varbusiness.com/sections/customer/customer.asp?ArticleID=26128

Still researching, 

Omnivorous-GA

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Clarification of Answer by omnivorous-ga on 31 Mar 2004 15:41 PST

Matthew --

This may be our lucky day: one of the resources that I was going to
suggest is the U.S. Economic Census.  One of the prime reasons to
suggest it is the HIGH level of detail it provides.  It's excellent
for segmenting industries into quite fine detail.

However, the Economic Census of the U.S. is done every 5 years, so the
most-detailed information is from 1997.  But the good news is that
just Monday, they released the top-level numbers for various
industries, so you can get very authoritative sizing on industries
you're seeking.  You'll want to make sure that you know the NAICS
codes for A/E/C, spelled out here:
U.S. Census Bureau
"2002 Economic Census: Advance Summary Statistics of the U.S."
http://www.census.gov/econ/census02/advance/TABLE1.HTM

"2002 Advanced Comparative Statistics with 1997"
http://www.census.gov/econ/census02/advance/TABLE2.HTM

You'll want to watch the U.S. Census numbers as your business develops
because for the first time, the 2002 Economic Census included
questions on e-commerce and IT spending:
"Schedule for Reports from the 2002 Economic Census"
http://www.census.gov/econ/census02/guide/g02sched.htm

Some other suggested resources for the longer term:
?	This presentation discusses FIAPP or Fully Integrated Automated
Project Processes and includes some resources at the University of
Colorado (though unfortunately a linked report on surveys of firms is
dead):
Construction Institute
"FIAPP Implementation" (August, 2000)
http://construction-institute.org/ac2000/bartlett_impl.ppt

The Construction Institute, which has that previous report on its
site, also has a large amount of historical research into areas of
industry spending:
"Project Teams -- Research"
http://construction-institute.org/p-teams-hist.cfm

And a final resource is the trade show, AEC Systems.  I've actually
planned exhibits for a software company that intended to show at this
conference and in the process was able to get detailed information
about industry attendees and their IT spending from the account reps:
AEC Systems Home Page
http://www.aecsystems.com/content/index3.asp


Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

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Clarification of Answer by omnivorous-ga on 31 Mar 2004 16:25 PST

Matthew --

One last note: I didn't include a direct link for the 1997 Economic
Census, which would be helpful in detailing the sizes of different
companies in the A/E/C industry.  This page has all of the links that
I think you'll need under "Construction," but also has details by
geography:
U.S. Cenus
1997 Economic Census
http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/econ97.html

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

I couldn't be more pleased.  The researcher provided me with exactly
what we were looking for.