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A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
Structural, civil, building services and design studios paid one commission at a time: valued on what an ordinary run of projects earns, not on whichever financial year happened to land well.
A Brisbane architecture or engineering consultancy is valued by replacing the principals' drawings with market salaries and capitalising the earnings the practice sustains over a whole project cycle, usually five years of results. Because fees arrive commission by commission, the risk loading turns on how much forward work is actually contracted, how dependably unbilled fees become cash, and how much rests on one or two registered principals.
A change of ownership sits behind most requests. The founder of a West End architecture studio is easing out and two associates want to buy in over several years. A Milton structural engineering firm is weighing an offer to join a national multidisciplinary group. A principal's share has to be valued for a property settlement in the Brisbane registry of the Federal Circuit and Family Court. A professional indemnity claim or a fee dispute needs its effect on earnings measured. Or a restructure needs a market value the ATO will accept.
Succession is the recurring theme. Architects and professional engineers in Queensland are registered as individuals rather than as practices, and many Brisbane consultancies still trade on the names and relationships of their founders. What matters is how much of the practice's value can pass to the next group of principals, at a price they can fund from the practice's own profits.
A certified valuer will listen to your situation and answer any questions you may have, at no cost.
The Income Approach leads. Whoever buys a consultancy is paying for its capacity to keep winning and delivering commissions, so the valuation looks at earnings across a sequence of projects rather than a single year.
We normally capitalise future maintainable earnings, with one departure from most sectors: maintainable earnings are usually drawn from five years of results, so that one large commission finishing early or running late does not decide the answer. Before that, each principal's drawings are replaced with a market salary for the design, technical and management work they do.
A discounted cash flow is reserved for forward work that is genuinely committed, such as staged design on a funded hospital or school project, or a fixed-term place on a state government consultant panel. Where the pipeline is mostly proposals and expressions of interest, we do not forecast from it, because a forecast built on bids not yet won would overstate what the practice can rely on.
Sales of consultancies in the same discipline and size band help place the result. Fewer of these firms change hands than businesses serving the public, so the evidence frames a range rather than fixing a point, and the report explains where in that range the practice sits and why.
Unbilled fees, debtors, equipment and design, modelling and analysis software licences are restated to what they would realise. That gives the floor, and where the unbilled balance is large the floor can be significant.
Two valuers looking at the same consultancy most often part ways at normalisation, so each adjustment appears in the report with its reason. In Brisbane design and engineering practices these are the common ones:
Brisbane's consultancies sort into a few groups. The large multidisciplinary firms sit mostly in the CBD and along the river, working on transport, health, education, defence and resources projects across the state. Mid-sized structural, civil, geotechnical and building services engineers are spread through Milton, Toowong, Bowen Hills, Newstead and Fortitude Valley. Architecture studios, mostly small and led by their principals, cluster in West End, South Bank, Fortitude Valley and Newstead, with residential specialists working across the inner north and the Redlands.
Queensland registers practitioners, not practices. Architects are registered with the state's architects board, and professional engineering services in Queensland must be carried out, or directly supervised, by an engineer registered with the state's engineers board, across a wide range of disciplines. That makes principal dependence a practical risk rather than a theoretical one: a structural or civil practice built around one registered engineer can lose the ability to certify its own work if that person leaves.
The type of work matters more than the address. A practice drawing fees from state road and rail programmes, the hospital precincts at Herston and Woolloongabba, university campuses or a standing government panel has income it can forecast with some confidence, and the venue and transport works planned ahead of the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games add to that pipeline over the coming years. A practice tied to private residential and apartment development is exposed to each turn of the building cycle. Nationally, construction businesses grew 3.4 per cent and professional, scientific and technical services businesses 3.6 per cent in 2025 to 2026 (Source: ABS, Counts of Australian Businesses, July 2022 to June 2026, released 18 August 2026). Consultancy fees follow building and infrastructure activity, so both series bear on how much work there is to win.
The report opens with the purpose of the valuation, the standard of value, the valuation date and the information relied on, flagging anything that was incomplete. It then explains each approach considered and the method used under it, sets out every normalisation adjustment with the reason behind it, and reconciles the results into a range, saying in plain sentences why each result was weighted as it was.
Consultancies meet scrutiny in a few places: a dispute between principals in the Supreme Court of Queensland, a building dispute before QCAT or a professional negligence claim in the District Court of Queensland where lost earnings are at issue, or a property settlement in the Federal Circuit and Family Court. Expert evidence in the state courts is governed by Chapter 11 Part 5 of the Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999 (Qld), and an opposing expert will ask why five years were averaged, how unbilled work was treated and why the pipeline was or was not forecast. Our reports are prepared under APESB, APES 225 Valuation Services and signed by a certified valuer who will answer those questions in person.
Ask which assumption the other side would attack first and how it would be defended. If the work is complete, the answer comes without hesitation.
An Indicative valuation shows a retiring principal what an associate buy-in might look like, and whether the practice's profits could carry it, before any terms are put on the table. It is for internal decision-making and is not written for third party reliance. A Summary report suits admitting a new equity principal, a merger or a bank application. A Detailed report is the level for a family law settlement, a dispute between principals, or any matter in which a second expert will review the opinion.
Build the report for the toughest reader it will meet. If a court, the ATO, a lender or another expert may test the figure, every step of the reasoning needs to be on the page.
For internal decision-making. Useful for testing an offer, setting an expectation before a negotiation, or deciding whether to go to market. It is not written for third party reliance.
Sets out the approaches applied, the normalisation adjustments made and the reasoning behind the conclusion. The usual choice for a sale, an ownership change or a finance application.
Applies and reconciles all relevant approaches in full. The level required where a court, the ATO, a lender or another expert will review the opinion.
Talk your situation through with a certified valuer before you commit to anything, at no cost.