Is Scope Creep Costing Your A&E Firm Thousands? Here Are 3 Ways to Take Back Control

Every A&E firm has heard it: “Can we just add this in?” And because we’re all wired to serve the client, the answer is usually yes. But over time, those “small” changes start to snowball — taking up extra hours, consuming budget, and slowly eroding your margin. 

It's Just A Small Change... Until it Isn't 

This isn’t just a project management issue — it’s a profitability one. And most PMs don’t even realize it’s happening until the job is closed and the damage is done. 

Scope Creep Hurts More Than You Think

Scope creep is silent, systemic, and expensive. It leads to: 

• Burned-out teams working beyond budget 

• Projects that look successful from a deliverables perspective — but lose money 

• Leadership doubting PMs, and PMs feeling micromanaged and unsuccessful 

And worst of all, the root causes often go unaddressed while profits and team morale continue to suffer. 

The Root Problem: No One Owns Change Management

In our work with A&E firms, we often find scope creep is a cultural issue, not a technical one. It’s baked into how teams are incentivized and how they communicate. 

Most firms don’t have a consistent way to: 

• Identify scope changes at the task level in real time 
  

• Evaluate the financial impact of requested changes

• Escalate change orders for client approval

Without this, PMs are left guessing — and margins suffer. 

The Scope Creep Solution for A&E Firms

We help firms operationalize scope management. That means: 

• Setting  hours budgets for each in-scope task to guide project teams on what's considered in-scope vs out-of-scope

• Training teams to recognize and document change requests early 

• Building workflows to seek proper approvals before out-of-scope work begins

• Connecting those changes to budgets, time entries, and client invoicing in real-time. 

It’s not about saying no to clients — it’s about saying yes with clarity. 

If You Use BQE CORE: Here Are Three Ways to Take Back Control

BQE CORE has strong capabilities for flagging and managing scope creep—if configured and used with the right processes. Here’s how we help: 

• Change Order Templates:
  We help firms build templates for change requests that link directly to budgets and task codes so that PMs can act quickly with minimal admin overhead. 

• Budget Tracking by Phase:
  BQE CORE lets you monitor budget consumption at the project, phase, and task levels. We help configure alerts and dashboards to catch overages before they become problems. 

• Time Allocation Audits:
  We use BQE CORE’s time entry data to spot scope drift early — e.g., automated alerts when team members are approaching the hours budgets on specific tasks, but before they actually go over budget. 

Example: A Firm That Drew the Line at Scope Creep: — And Won  

One 40-person civil engineering firm we worked with was quietly losing margin across dozens of projects. By implementing real-time hours logging against budget in BQE CORE and tying those changes to financial impact, they captured over $180,000 in incremental revenue from change orders in a single year that would have otherwise been lost to scope creep. 

Actionable Takeaways for A&E Firms: 

• Review your last 10 projects. How many had undocumented changes?
• Create a simple intake form for change order requests — and see if it can be automated.
• Train your PMs on the phrase: “Happy to make that change—let me just route it through our approval process.” 

Scope creep isn’t a client problem — it’s a business process problem. But it’s fixable, and a great system can help. You don’t need to micromanage your teams — you need to give them tools and structure that protect their time and your bottom line. 

Ready to Eliminate Scope Creep Before It Starts?

When your project data, budgets, and timelines live in one unified platform, scope changes become visible immediately — not after they've already impacted your bottom line. SPRCHRGR's implementation and optimization services integrate with your existing systems for unified financial operations, giving you the real-time visibility and control needed to catch scope creep early and manage it profitably.

Don't let uncontrolled project changes continue costing your firm thousands. Schedule a call with SPRCHRGR's accounting and finance engineers to see how the right ERP foundation can transform scope creep from a profit killer into a managed revenue opportunity.