Engineering/ Technical Services
Proactive Investment Strategy In Engineering Services: Establishing A Robust Market And Competitive Fact Base For Evaluating Targets
Conducted a 4-week proactive investment strategy effort to provide a large PE client with a dependable fact base for assessing potential acquisition targets in the highly localized and fragmented engineering services market. To this end, Gotham: built a granular market sizing model and a dashboard tool to allow the investment team to visualize served addressable market size and growth rates based on a target’s end-market and geographic presence; established competitive intensity by market segment; shortlisted the 3 most promising targets from a list of 12 engineering services firms tracked by the client; and conducted ~80 interviews with engineering services buyers in geographies served by the shortlisted targets to understand the firms’ positioning. Gotham provided our client a robust fact base and tool for evaluating targets and provided the deal team a jump start in its investment process.
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Customer & Market Due Diligence Of Engineering Consulting Firm: Validating Market Opportunity To Create A Super-regional Player
Conducted a 4-week customer & market due diligence of an engineering consulting firm to confirm that the target was a solid platform with acquisition targets available to create a super-regional player. To this end, Gotham: conducted 100+ interviews and 100+ online surveys with engineering services customers; built a bottom-up market sizing model using Dodge construction activity data to establish market growth trends and market share by end-market and state; backtested the target’s sales mix to determine potential impact of a recession on the target’s business; and analyzed over 1,475 engineering services firms to identify 110 potential acquisition targets. Gotham’s comprehensive assessment provided our client with the facts and comfort level necessary to compete aggressively in a hotly-contested auction.
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Operations Improvements at Multi-disciplinary Engineering Services Firm: Improving Profitability and Revenue Performance
Conducted a 6-week operations assessment to turn around the company’s margin performance and position it for a successful exit in 2-3 years’ time. Analyzed historical project and employee utilization performance; developed target staffing leverage model; and created target business development model to improve efficiency of business development effort while driving profitable revenue growth. Our detailed assessment gave our client a solid understanding and roadmap of the levers to achieve the target margin performance (5-7% points growth); client requested Gotham to provide ongoing support through quarterly performance audits.
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Operational Due Diligence of Testing Services Provider: Rapidly Validating Margin Improvement Opportunities and Assessing Capacity/CapEx Risk
Conducted 2-week operational due diligence to validate margin improvement opportunities and assess capacity/CapEx risk. Gotham visited 7 facilities and conducted full-day operations review with management to understand operations management approach/processes and visions/plans moving forward. To fill gaps in this data poor situation, we performed various in-depth analyses – recasting labor cost structure, analyzing job-level data to understand profitability, building a bottom-up labor utilization and fixed cost model to project margins with revenue growth, etc. Gotham’s due diligence work enabled our client to move forward with confidence and successfully acquire target in a proprietary deal.
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Customer & Market Due Diligence of Specialty Engineering Consulting Firm: Clarifying Investment Potential in Highly Complex Niche Market
Conducted Customer & Market Due Diligence for Midwestern PE client to sort through target’s complex market dynamics, validate its competitive positioning, establish the criteria driving customer buying behavior, and provide clarity on growth opportunities moving forward. Profiled over 180 competitors, interviewed 60+ customers, and conducted extensive secondary research on market dynamics to provide PE client with a clear picture of in-going growth opportunities. Client proceeded with the acquisition based on Gotham’s findings.
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Operational Due Diligence of An Entrepreneurial Specialty Engineering Services Firm: Instilling Process Discipline Required for Future Growth While Sustaining Performance-oriented Culture
Conducted operational due diligence to assess the firm’s prospect-to-cash cycle processes and establish a revenue forecasting approach. Our effort included: building a robust fact base of the company’s cost and operational performance using data from ERP and offline database; mapping and assessing sales & marketing, revenue generation, and people management processes; and visiting/interviewing management across multiple offices. Gotham provided an explicit top-level operations end-vision and value creation plan bolstering the company’s ability to support growth, giving our client the necessary confidence to successfully complete negotiations.
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