Operational Dashboards Every AEC Leadership Team Should Have

Imagine a world where you don’t need to check four different platforms to get an answer to a project question. Most leadership teams still make decisions based on fragmented reports, spreadsheets, and lagging indicators.

Below are the dashboards Arvaya strongly recommends to improve decision-making and visibility for AEC leadership. Not only do we recommend having these, but having these dashboards pull data from every platform your organization uses is crucial to staying up to date. And if you really want to strike gold, we recommend personalized team and employee training on each dashboard.

As you read through, ask yourself: what do your dashboards show, and what do you wish they showed?

1. Revenue pipeline dashboard

Visibility into future revenue and business development performance.

What it should include

• Active pursuits by stage (identified → qualified → pursuit → proposal submitted → shortlisted → awarded)
• Proposal pipeline by sector, client, and contract type (public vs. private, on-call vs. project-specific)
• Win rate by opportunity type (RFP, RFQ, sole source, repeat client)
• Estimated contract start timelines tied to backlog forecasting
• Top pursuits requiring executive involvement
• Relationship strength with client decision makers (warm lead vs. incumbent vs. cold pursuit)

2. Project performance dashboard

Real-time visibility into project execution and firm profitability.

What it should include

• Project budget vs. actuals
• Billable vs. non-billable hours by employee, discipline, and project
• Schedule progress
• Project schedule health (milestones met, delays, upcoming deadlines)

3. Operational capacity dashboard

Helps teams understand capacity and resource allocation.

What it should include

• Billable utilization by discipline and team (design, engineering, field, PM)
• Available capacity vs. committed project hours
• Upcoming staffing demand based on project schedules and pursuits

The systems behind the dashboards

In our opinion, what creates effective dashboards is how systems are structured behind them. When CRM, ERP, project systems, and operational data are integrated correctly, dashboards become a real-time decision layer for leadership.

True success in systems involves team training and dashboards that are structured for how your organization actually operates, not just layered on top of what is not working. See how Arvaya OS powers executive dashboards.

We would love to hear how your firm is thinking about dashboards. Do you have all of this data in one spot? Let us know on LinkedIn.