What SMPS Is Telling Us Right Now
The Society for Marketing Professional Services runs regional conferences every spring. These are the rooms where AEC proposal coordinators, marketing directors, and BD leads compare notes on what is working and what is not.
The SMPS Pacific Regional Conference wrapped up March 15 in Portland. The Southeastern Regional Conference started March 17 in Norfolk. The session topics, speaker themes, and hallway conversations this month point to five shifts that matter for anyone managing proposals at an A/E or construction firm.
1. AI Adoption Is Real — But Uneven and Misunderstood
The SMPS Pacific Regional Conference included a dedicated session on modernizing proposal planning with AI. The room was full. That alone tells you something about where the industry's attention is right now.
But the conversation has moved past "should we use AI?" to "we adopted AI and the results are mixed — now what?"
The numbers support that nuance:
- Only 27% of AEC professionals use AI in any part of their workflow (ASCE, December 2025).
- Of those who do, 94% plan to increase their use in 2026 — early adopters are finding value.
- 67% of AEC organizations say less than half their proposal process is AI-powered (a 2026 industry survey of nearly 300 proposal professionals).
The pattern emerging at SMPS sessions: firms that tried general-purpose AI tools (ChatGPT, Copilot) for proposal writing saw modest improvements in drafting speed but no meaningful reduction in overall proposal hours. The hours saved on narrative get consumed by the same formatting, coordination, and assembly bottlenecks.
The firms seeing real results are the ones that addressed the data layer — structured staff profiles, centralized project data, reusable content libraries — before layering AI on top.
ENR captured the competitive angle in their FutureTech 2026 framing: "You won't lose the next bid to AI — but perhaps you will to a firm using AI." The window for early-mover advantage is still open, but it is closing.
2. Pursuit Strategy Is Getting More Disciplined
Multiple SMPS sessions this spring focus on pursuit strategy and go/no-go decision frameworks. The underlying message: firms that chase everything win less.
The data supports this shift:
- 44% of firms cannot complete 20-29% of incoming RFPs due to capacity constraints (a 2026 industry survey of nearly 300 proposal professionals). They are saying yes to more work than they can handle.
- Firms with disciplined go/no-go processes report 15-25% higher win rates (APMP).
- Proposal tasks consume 3-8% of firm revenue (SMPS). For a $10M firm, that is $300,000-$800,000 annually in labor spent pursuing work.
The practical shift happening at firms right now: instead of a principal deciding over lunch whether to pursue an opportunity, firms are implementing structured evaluation criteria — client relationship, relevant experience, team availability, competitive position, strategic value. They are tracking outcomes against those criteria and feeding the data back into future decisions.
The SMPS community is moving from gut-feel pursuit decisions to measured, repeatable processes. Firms that have not started this shift are falling behind on win rate — not because their technical work is weaker, but because they spread their proposal effort too thin.
3. The Staffing Model for Proposals Is Breaking
The traditional AEC proposal staffing model — one marketing coordinator who handles everything, supported by PMs who write when they can — is under visible strain.
SMPS session themes this year include defining the proposal coordinator role, building proposal teams rather than relying on individuals, and figuring out when to hire versus when to systematize.
The benchmark data explains why:
- 63% of proposal teams regularly work overtime (a 2026 industry survey of nearly 300 proposal professionals).
- 88% report high stress levels.
- The average submittal involves 11 or more contributors across disciplines.
Many mid-size firms (20-100 staff) have exactly one person who manages the entire proposal process. That person maintains staff resumes, coordinates inputs from a dozen contributors, formats submittals, runs QC, manages the pursuit calendar, and somehow also handles the firm's marketing materials. When that person burns out or leaves, the institutional knowledge goes with them.
The SMPS conversation is shifting from "how do we hire a better proposal coordinator?" to "how do we build a system that doesn't depend on one person remembering where everything is?" The answer involves centralized data (structured staff profiles, project databases, content libraries), not just additional headcount.
APMP data suggests firms with a dedicated proposal function — even if it is one person with the right tools — report win rates 15-25% higher than firms where proposals are everyone's second priority.
4. Federal Uncertainty Is Changing Pipeline Strategy
The IIJA's September 30, 2026 expiration and ongoing DOGE contract terminations came up repeatedly at the Pacific Regional Conference. For firms with federal exposure, this is not a future concern — it is a current planning problem.
Key facts driving the conversation:
- $2.3 billion in authorized IIJA funds have already been rescinded.
- DOGE has terminated contracts worth roughly $71 billion across federal programs.
- DoD — which accounts for 43% of AEC federal spend — faces a 14% funding decrease.
- Meanwhile, VA hospital construction ($816M major construction) and GSA (73% increase in remediation/repair) are surging.
The practical impact for proposal teams: the mix of opportunities is shifting. Firms that built their pipelines around a steady flow of federal SF330s and RFQs will see fewer of those opportunities. State DOT programs funded by federal pass-through dollars will get uncertain. And as federal-heavy firms look for work elsewhere, competition for state and municipal pursuits gets stiffer.
SMPS attendees are talking about pipeline audits — tagging every active pursuit by funding source (direct federal, federal pass-through, state/local, private) and assessing concentration risk. Firms with more than 50% of their pipeline in the top two categories are building diversification plans now, not waiting until September.
The firms that already have current SOQ materials and project sheets ready for non-federal clients will move fastest into those markets.
5. The "Proposal as Scoring Document" Mindset Is Spreading
A theme running through multiple SMPS sessions: the shift from treating proposals as documents to treating them as scoring instruments.
The distinction matters. A document tells your firm's story. A scoring instrument answers every evaluation criterion in the order and format the evaluator expects, making it easy to assign the highest possible score.
For SF330 submittals, this means:
- Section E resumes highlight the experience that matches the solicitation's key personnel requirements — not a generic career summary.
- Section F projects are selected based on scope relevance, recency, and the specific evaluation criteria — not just the firm's largest or most impressive projects.
- Section H directly addresses each evaluation criterion in the order they are listed — with weight-proportional emphasis.
For SOQs and RFP responses, the same principle applies: read the evaluation criteria first, structure the response to make scoring easy, and tailor every component to the specific opportunity.
This is not new advice, but the SMPS community is operationalizing it in a way that was less common a few years ago. More firms are assigning "red team" reviewers who score the draft submittal using the client's published criteria before final submission. More firms are building proposal checklists tied to compliance requirements rather than generic templates.
The operational requirement behind this mindset shift: staff resumes, project experience sheets, and firm qualifications need to be tailorable per pursuit, quickly. A firm that takes 30-60 minutes to reformat one resume cannot meaningfully tailor 10 resumes for every pursuit. The scoring-document mindset only works when the underlying data is structured enough to support rapid, pursuit-specific output.
What This Means for Your Firm
The five trends converge on one operational reality: AEC proposal teams are being asked to do more strategic work (AI adoption, pursuit discipline, scoring optimization) while still drowning in the same tactical bottlenecks (resume formatting, project sheet assembly, contributor coordination).
The firms pulling ahead are not the ones with the best AI tools or the biggest marketing departments. They are the ones that have fixed the foundation — structured data, centralized content, repeatable processes — so that their proposal team can spend time on strategy instead of reformatting.
Three things you can do this week:
-
Audit your pursuit pipeline by funding source. Tag each active opportunity as direct federal, federal pass-through, state/local, or private. If your federal exposure is above 50%, start building your diversification plan.
-
Track your next five submittals by hours per task. Where are the hours going — writing, formatting, coordinating, or assembling? The answer tells you whether AI drafting tools or structured data systems will have more impact.
-
Score your own last submittal. Take the evaluation criteria from a recent pursuit and score your firm's submittal the way an evaluator would. Where did you leave points on the table? That exercise reveals whether your proposals are documents or scoring instruments.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is SMPS?
The Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) is the professional association for marketers and business developers in architecture, engineering, and construction firms. SMPS hosts an annual national conference (Build Business) and several regional conferences throughout the year. The regional conferences typically focus on practical topics like proposal strategy, AI adoption, pursuit management, and staffing models. The Certified Professional Services Marketer (CPSM) credential is administered by SMPS.
When are the 2026 SMPS regional conferences?
The SMPS Pacific Regional Conference took place March 13-15, 2026 in the Portland/Seattle area. The SMPS Southeastern Regional Conference runs March 17-19, 2026 in Norfolk, Virginia. Additional regional conferences are scheduled throughout the spring. Check smps.org for the full 2026 calendar.
How are AEC firms using AI for proposals in 2026?
Most firms are in early stages. The ASCE found that only 27% of AEC professionals use AI in any capacity. Those who do primarily use it for drafting narrative sections — technical approaches, management plans, and boilerplate content. A smaller group has moved to structured data systems that automate resume generation and project sheet formatting, which addresses the larger portion of proposal hours. 67% of AEC organizations still have less than half their proposal process AI-powered.
What is a go/no-go framework for proposals?
A structured evaluation process for deciding whether to pursue an opportunity. Typical criteria include client relationship strength, relevant experience, team availability, competitive position, strategic value, and profit potential. Firms score each criterion, set a threshold, and only pursue opportunities above the threshold. APMP data shows firms with disciplined go/no-go processes win 15-25% more often than firms that decide on gut feel. See our go/no-go decision framework guide for implementation details.
Why does the IIJA expiration matter for proposal teams?
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act expires September 30, 2026. Federal agencies and state DOTs funded by IIJA dollars may slow or pause new procurements as the funding authorization ends. Firms with high federal exposure — especially those chasing USACE, FHWA, or state DOT work funded by federal pass-through — could see fewer opportunities in the second half of 2026. The gap between IIJA expiration and potential reauthorization could last a year or more based on past legislative timelines.