Architect KPI Dashboard Example

Architecture Firm Performance Dashboard

It's the partners' meeting in late January. The boards are full for the first time in a year, the studio is billing, and the backlog report says almost seven months. Then someone puts the net multiplier on the screen, and it's lower than it was when half the desks were empty.

The market explains why so many practices take whatever they can win. The AIA/Deltek Architecture Billings Index for August 2026 came in at 47.2, and any score under 50 means billings declined from the month before. Inquiries grew only modestly, and the value of newly signed design contracts kept falling. AIA's July report described a downturn that had run for nearly three and a half years.

Backlogs show it too. The 2026 Deltek Clarity A&E Study put median backlog at 6.33 months for fiscal 2025, down from 9.00 months the year before, and median utilization at 58.9%, its lowest since 2021. When school and civic work thins out, plenty of practices turn to houses. Those are a small slice of the profession: the AIA Firm Survey Report 2024 found that firms earned about 20% of their 2023 design revenue from residential projects, and only 8% from single-family homes, because architects work mostly at the custom end of that market.

The practice in this example is made up: a 30-person firm in the Midwest that designs schools, civic buildings and small commercial projects. The figures are modeled; none come from a client. Two of its targets come from Deltek's high-performer bar and one from Deltek's median backlog. The rest are starting points, with the published medians shown beside them where they exist.

What is an Architecture Firm KPI Dashboard?

Overview

An architecture firm KPI dashboard shows whether the practice is winning enough of the right work, keeping its people on billable projects, and charging enough for those hours to cover overhead and leave a profit.

It starts with the pipeline. Proposal win rate says how many of the proposals that were decided came your way. Average fee per commission says how big those wins were, which matters, because winning twice as many jobs at a third of the fee is a worse month. Backlog turns the signed work into months: how long the studio could keep billing if nothing new came in.

Then the studio. Utilization is the share of available hours charged to projects. The net multiplier is what each dollar of that project labor brought back in fees, after consultants and reimbursables come out. Overhead rate is everything else (rent, software, insurance, marketing, the hours nobody could bill) as a share of project labor. Operating profit margin is what's left of net revenue once both are paid.

Then the cash. Unbilled WIP counts the days of earned fee that haven't been invoiced yet. The collection period counts the days invoices wait to be paid. Net revenue per employee, on a trailing twelve months, is the slow check on whether the practice is the right size for the work it has.

Who benefits from this dashboard?

1. Managing Principal: The multiplier, overhead rate and operating profit margin answer the question the bank and the other partners both ask: is the practice earning its overhead, or just staying busy?
2. Business Development Lead: Win rate next to average fee per commission shows when a run of wins is really a run of small, cheap jobs, and which markets are worth the proposal hours.
3. Project Managers: Utilization tells them who has room this week. Unbilled WIP tells them which phases are finished in the drawings and still not on an invoice.
4. Studio Leaders: Backlog in months is the hiring signal. Seven months of signed work justifies a new project architect; four months says hold off.
5. Controller or Office Manager: The collection period moves before the bank balance does, so a public client paying slower shows up here a month or two before payroll feels it.

Calculate the multiplier on net revenue, never on gross fees. On a project carrying $400,000 of structural and MEP consultants, counting their fees as yours can add a point or more to the multiplier while your own team loses money on the job.

Dashboard Example Overview

The example practice has 30 staff in October 2024, rising to 32. Most of its fees come from K-12 districts, counties and small commercial owners.

It reports these ten KPIs once the books close each month:

• Proposal Win Rate: Proposals won divided by proposals decided, by count, over a rolling three months. One month of five or six decisions is too few to read on its own.
• Average Fee per Commission: Fee value of commissions signed divided by the number signed, rolling three months. It has no target. It's there to explain the win rate and the backlog.
• Backlog: Signed fees not yet earned, divided by average monthly net revenue over the last three months. Unsigned proposals don't count, however close they feel.
• Utilization Rate: Hours charged to projects divided by available hours (paid hours less holidays and PTO), for everyone including principals. This practice counts hours, where Deltek counts labor dollars.
• Net Multiplier: Net revenue (fees earned, less consultants and reimbursables) divided by direct labor cost. Break-even is 1 plus the overhead rate.
• Overhead Rate: Total overhead, including indirect labor, fringe benefits, rent and every other indirect cost, divided by direct labor cost.
• Operating Profit Margin: Net revenue less direct labor and overhead, divided by net revenue, before bonuses and partner distributions.
• Unbilled WIP: Fees earned but not yet invoiced, divided by average daily net revenue. It climbs when phases run long on lump-sum work.
• Collection Period: Accounts receivable divided by average daily billings, in days. Public clients with board approval cycles push it up.
• Net Revenue per Employee: Net revenue over the trailing twelve months divided by average total staff. It catches hiring that runs ahead of the fees.

In October 2024, the practice looks fine on paper. Backlog is 7.2 months, the net multiplier is 3.08 and operating profit margin is 17.0%.

But two districts have pushed bond projects back a year. The rolling win rate is 35.3% and falling.

Over the winter, the pipeline drains.

By April 2025, the win rate is 25.0%, backlog is down to 4.5 months and utilization to 56.7%. With fewer hours to bill, overhead climbs to 180.0% of direct labor, and operating profit margin falls to 6.7%.

The multiplier hardly moves, at 3.00. The practice isn't underpricing its work. It just doesn't have enough of it.

So in May 2025, the partners open a residential studio. It takes on custom homes, additions and whole-house renovations, quoted as lump sums to compete with design-build firms and one-person practices.

Proposals decided each month go from five or six to 12 or more, and the practice wins them. The rolling win rate reaches 55.0% in September 2025.

Average fee per commission drops from $176,700 in October 2024 to $75,800 in June 2025, because the jobs are smaller. There are just many more of them.

Backlog and utilization respond the way the partners hoped. Backlog is back to 6.8 months in December 2025, and utilization reaches 66.1% in January 2026, the best figure in two years. The practice hires two more staff, reaching 32 by February 2026.

With more hours billed, overhead rate falls to 136.6% by February.

The multiplier tells the rest.

It slips every month from July 2025, to 2.65 in December and 2.61 in January 2026. Homeowners ask for more design options than a school board does. They change direction after the first contractor pricing, and they expect their architect at more site visits.

On a lump sum, each of those hours comes out of the fee.

Operating profit margin recovers from the April low to 12.6% in August 2025, then slides back to 9.2% in December.

Unbilled WIP grows from 24 days to 41 in January 2026. The residential fees are billed when a phase closes, and a phase that runs long sits unbilled.

One number does better on houses.

Homeowners pay a retainer up front and settle invoices faster than counties do. So the collection period falls from 75 days in December 2024 to 58 in February 2026.

In February 2026, the partners put win rate, average fee, backlog, utilization and the multiplier on one screen. They choose a balance rather than a winner.

The residential studio stays, but it's capped at about a quarter of backlog. Residential fees are now quoted phase by phase, with a minimum fee and two rounds of design options included. Anything beyond that is billed hourly as additional services.

The business development lead stops proposing on the smallest jobs.

The win rate pays for it.

It falls to 44.4% by September 2026, just under its 45% target and well off the 55.0% peak. The practice now loses the clients who were shopping on price, on purpose.

Average fee per commission recovers to $121,700. Backlog settles at 6.3 months, utilization at 63.6%, and the multiplier climbs back to 2.95. Operating profit margin reaches 17.9% in September 2026, a little above where it started.

Some numbers are still short.

The multiplier hasn't made 3.0, because several lump sums signed in late 2025 will run to the end of their contracts at the old terms. Unbilled WIP is 30 days, against a 25-day target.

Net revenue per employee is $175,400 on a trailing twelve months. That's only just at target, and still below the $180,300 of October 2024, because the two hires arrived before the better-priced work did.

List of Architecture Firm KPIs

The Deltek Clarity A&E Study gives a published figure for eight of these. Treat the targets marked (starting point) as this practice's own, and replace them once you have a year of your own history.

Why Architecture Firm Dashboards Matter

In a practice, the people who win the work, the people who do it and the person who bills it often meet only at the partners' table. Business development sees a strong win rate. The studio sees full timesheets. The controller sees the multiplier a month after the hours were spent, by which point the fee is gone.

Most of these numbers can be pushed up by quietly pushing another one down. Cut fees and the win rate rises while the multiplier falls. Fill the studio with small lump sums and utilization rises while unbilled WIP piles up. Hire ahead of the work and backlog looks easier to deliver while net revenue per employee drops. Even overhead rate flatters a busy studio, because the same rent spread across more billable hours looks like efficiency.

None of that makes residential work, or any other market, a mistake. The example practice ended the two years with more profit than it started with and a second market to lean on when bond referendums fail. It got there because the partners could see what the houses were costing them per hour, in time to change how they priced the next one.

So check the multiplier on the jobs you won last quarter, not just the ones you're finishing. That's where the next year's margin is already decided.