What are the latest emerging trends in marketing and business development? The SMPS Foundation is back with new research into the trends impacting AEC firms as well as marketing and business development professionals.

In this two-part webinar series, you'll gain practical strategies for improving your hiring process and building a team culture that fosters trust, resilience, and engagement. Learn how to make better hiring decisions, strengthen leadership, and create an environment where employees can thrive and grow.

Marketing teams have more data than ever, yet many still struggle to answer one fundamental question: Is our marketing actually working? For AEC firms, the answer cannot be found in website traffic, social engagement, proposal volume, or any other single metric. Marketing works as a connected system, and measuring it requires a more complete view. In this session, Kelly Jo and Roman will introduce a practical, weighted KPI framework that consolidates business development outcomes, client and market growth, engagement, and brand visibility into a single transparent marketing health score. Attendees will see how the system organizes channel-level data without letting vanity metrics overshadow the work most closely tied to business growth. They will also learn how to adapt the framework to their own firm and use the results to make better decisions about team capacity, priorities, time, and investment.

Technical excellence gets firms shortlisted. Leadership presence wins the room. In this highly interactive session, our facilitator explores the behaviors, mindset, and communication habits that elevate leaders from competent to compelling. Whether leading an internal team, facilitating a pursuit strategy meeting, or standing in front of a client, presence shapes perception and perception shapes trust.

AI is no longer a side experiment—it’s core to how A/E/C firms win work, plan growth, and lead responsibly. This four-part masterclass moves from foundations to foresight: you’ll demystify the tech, identify high-value use cases, confront the legal/ethical realities, and put AI to work in strategic planning and business development. 6 CEUs

Design Smarter, Not Harder is a three-part masterclass built for AEC marketers who need to produce polished, professional proposals — without the learning curve. Across three focused sessions, you'll move from InDesign fundamentals to table systems that survive last-minute edits, to image prep workflows that look advanced without requiring advanced skills. 3 CEUs

Join Christopher Penn, co-founder and Chief Data Scientist at TrustInsights.ai, for a 40-minute session on creating and deploying a tailored AI governance policy in your A/E/C organization. You’ll discover why unmanaged AI use can introduce ethical, legal, and security vulnerabilities, and how to apply SMPS’s AI Governance Policy Templates alongside a structured “5P” process to establish clear guardrails, drive innovation, and ensure compliance. Walk away with a concrete plan to customize your firm’s policy using “knowledge blocks” and best-practice rollout strategies.