A few minutes of read-only financials and a short questionnaire surfaces what a buyer would discount your firm for — the key-person risk on you as the seal and the rainmaker, the client or public-agency concentration in your backlog, and the working-capital pull from slow-paying public-sector receivables. Built on your real net service revenue, not gross billings. Preview costs nothing.
Enter two numbers for an instant Engineering Firms ballpark. No signup — the real number comes from your books.
We answer each one from your books first — so you fix the story before a diligence team writes the number.
If you're the engineer of record whose seal goes on the drawings — and you also bring in the work and own the agency relationships — a buyer sees a license and a rainmaker walking out the door, not a transferable business. In many states the firm legally needs a PE in responsible charge to keep practicing, so the work can stop without a replacement. A PE-backed platform can slot in its own principals; a search-funder or SBA-backed buyer is underwriting whether the firm survives your exit, and discounts hard. This is the single biggest haircut on an engineering firm.
Project work is lumpy, so a buyer prices the risk that your largest client — or the one DOT, city, or utility that feeds most of your on-call work — doesn't renew or loses its budget. Public-agency work is sticky and creditworthy, but it lives and dies by the procurement cycle. If your top account is an outsized share of net service revenue, expect the buyer to model what happens when that contract re-bids.
Buyers pay for visibility. A deep backlog of contracted and on-call work that converts as presented lifts the price; a thin pipeline, or a backlog that's all one project type or one end-market, gets discounted for repeatability. They'll test whether the backlog is signed and fundable or just verbal, and whether your work mix is diversified enough to survive a soft patch in any one sector.
The whole industry is short on licensed PEs, and a buyer knows it. If there's no second PE-licensed principal and no succession plan, they price both the key-person risk and the cost and time to recruit licensed staff into a tight market. A documented bench — licensed engineers who can stamp, plus a named successor — is what turns 'buying a job' into 'buying a firm.'
Each lever is sized for a typical small/mid firm, ~$4m net service revenue, ~15% owner-normalized ebitda — about $600K EBITDA. Same number whether we frame it as “what a buyer discounts” or “what you keep by fixing it.”
Promoting or hiring a second PE-licensed principal who can stamp drawings and run projects without you — and moving your top client relationships onto them — is the highest-leverage play an engineering owner has. It removes the seal-and-rainmaker risk that caps the multiple, and in many states it's what lets the firm keep its registration after you leave.
adds about 0.5–1.0× to your multiple · usually takes 18–36 months
Master service agreements, on-call/IDIQ positions, and term contracts with public agencies are the closest an engineering firm gets to recurring revenue. They survive a change of ownership and give a buyer forward visibility, which lifts the multiple. Deepening agency relationships into multi-year vehicles is worth more than the same revenue won one project at a time.
adds about 0.3–0.6× to your multiple · usually takes 12–24 months
Shrinking the gap between work performed and invoice sent — and chasing slow agency receivables toward a 45-day DSO — both improves the cash a buyer is buying and shrinks the working-capital peg they'll negotiate at close. Clean WIP and AR aging is one of the first things a quality-of-earnings team tests.
adds about 0.2–0.4× to your multiple · usually takes 6–12 months
Document the backlog so it's signed, scoped, and clearly convertible — not a verbal pipeline — and get to clean accrual books with a documented add-back trail, especially principal comp. Backlog that converts as presented and earnings a buyer can trust are what protect the price you've earned from a mid-diligence re-trade.
adds about 0.2–0.4× to your multiple · usually takes 3–12 months
Typical impact ranges blended from lower-middle-market transaction data, sub-$50M M&A databases, and observed consolidator pricing in the $300K–$3M EBITDA band. Directional, not a guarantee — your memo computes your actual numbers from your books.
The metrics buyers grade engineering firms on. The diagnostic fills the “your business” column from your actual QuickBooks data.
| Metric | Engineering Firms benchmark | Your business | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recurring / contracted revenue | ~40% of revenue | Your data | Higher is better — the top multiple lever |
| Gross margin | ~45% | Your data | Pricing and job-costing discipline |
| EBITDA margin | ~15% | Your data | What flows to the bottom line |
| Healthy customer-concentration ceiling | top customer under 15% | Your data | Above it, buyers price the risk |
| Typical industry growth | ~8% / yr | Your data | Beating it can add to your multiple |
| Typical sale multiple | 5.0–8.0× EBITDA | Your data | Where the bidding starts; the levers above move you up |
Benchmarks are blended industry composites, service businesses $1M–$10M revenue, 2026-Q1 — directional, not a precise bar. Your memo measures you against your own books. Connect QuickBooks to fill in your numbers →
The diagnostic arrives as formats you can actually use, plus a private, scoped link to share a curated package with a specific buyer — you decide, card by card, what they see.
A branded slide deck, ready to present — for the buyer meeting, the lender, or the board.
A written diagnostic that holds up with buyers, yours to edit — plain-English summary, how we rebuilt your real earnings, every add-back listed.
Live formulas, not a dead printout — the path from raw profit to your real number, plus the cash-tied-up scenarios a buyer can stress-test.
Engineering is in one of the most active roll-ups in professional services. PE-backed and employee-owned national platforms acquire established firms as add-ons and pay up when the firm runs without its founder: active acquirers include Salas O'Brien (Blackstone minority), IMEG (ESOP), Verdantas (Sterling), Universal Engineering Sciences (BDT & MSD), Kleinfelder (Lindsay Goldberg), and Bowman Consulting (public); NV5 was itself acquired by Acuren in 2025. Independent sponsors and search funds buy smaller owner-operated firms to professionalize, and regional strategics buy for coverage. The platforms' 10–13x multiples are their cost of capital, not what a single-principal seller gets. The memo maps which pool fits a firm your size.
Read-only, through Intuit. We never write to your books. About 5 minutes.
Just what the books can’t show — agreements, key accounts, who runs the crews.
Buyer-readiness score, normalized EBITDA, value range and top flags — instantly.
The full engine, all three deliverables, the dashboard and the buyer deal room.
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Start with the free preview. Pay once — $499 — only when you want the full memo. No subscription, no per-seat pricing.
Most Engineering Firms businesses in the $1M–$10M revenue range trade at roughly 5.0× to 8.0× normalized EBITDA, with a typical deal near 6.4×. Smaller, owner-dependent shops sit at the low end; larger, manager-run businesses with recurring revenue reach the top. Your actual number depends on your books — that's what the diagnostic computes, blending recent lower-middle-market closings, main-street marketplace sales, and academic M&A survey data.
No, but it's the first thing a buyer prices. A platform with its own licensed principals can absorb your firm and replace your stamp on day one; an individual buyer or search fund needs you to stay through a transition or have a second licensed engineer in place. The single biggest thing you can do before selling is develop or hire a PE-licensed principal who can be the engineer of record without you — it removes the risk that caps your multiple and, in many states, keeps the firm legally able to practice.
A lot — backlog is how a buyer sees forward revenue. But they'll test it: signed, scoped contracts and on-call/MSA positions that convert as presented lift the price, while a verbal pipeline or a backlog concentrated in one client or one project type gets discounted. Documenting your backlog so it's clearly convertible — and diversified — is one of the highest-return things you can do before going to market.
Because that's how buyers in your industry size a firm. If you flow survey, geotech, or other subconsultant costs through your books as pass-throughs, those dollars aren't really yours — buyers strip them out and value the net service revenue your own people produce, plus the margin on it. We do the same so your number matches what a real acquirer will put in front of you.
Sixty seconds. Four numbers. No signup, no email. Just a real answer.