What’s the Best Org Structure for Your Firm?

What’s the Best Org Structure for Your Firm?

Wrong Question—But Let’s Talk About It Anyway

Let’s get one thing straight right away: There is no perfect organizational structure. None. Not for your firm. Not for any firm. You will not stumble upon a tidy chart that magically balances all personalities, capabilities, egos, clients, and service demands. So, if you’re hoping this article will deliver a silver bullet, save yourself the read and just go back to concocting your perfect solution. Who knows? Maybe you’ll defy the odds.

Still with me after that opening salvo? Good.

Because while no structure is perfect, some are better fits than others depending on the size of your firm, your strategic priorities, your leadership bench, and—let’s be honest—your appetite for chaos. And even the “right” structure won’t save you if you don’t do the underlying things well: communication, accountability, decision rights, role clarity, and leadership development. But we’ll get to that.

For now, let’s take a whirlwind tour through the organizational structures most common in the AE industry and examine some totally made-up (but reasonably credible) examples of what these structures look like when they work—and what they look like when they don’t.

1. The Classic Functional Structure

(Departments by discipline)

Fictional firm:
Redstone Collaborative is a 30-person firm that wants to focus on technical excellence and streamline delivery.

What it looks like when it works:
Operations are tight and efficient, and the firm routinely cranks out beautifully coordinated projects. Everyone sits near each other, and the partners are involved in most decisions. Everyone knows what they’re doing, and you don’t need a massive bureaucracy to keep things moving. There are clear lines of authority—engineers report to the Director of Engineering. Architects report to—you guessed it—the Director of Architecture. Clean. Simple. Predictable.

What it looks like when it doesn’t:
Redstone doubles in size in three years. Now there are three layers of engineers, and the Director of Engineering has become a glorified traffic cop. Worse, the architecture team doesn’t talk to the MEP folks until 48 hours before a submission deadline. “Functional” becomes “fractured.”

The lesson:
This structure works best when teams are small and cross-functional communication is informal and easy. But once scale kicks in, the seams start to show.

2. The Studio/Market-Based Structure

(Teams organized by client type or market)

Fictional firm:
Blueprint South is a 120-person, studio-based firm with deep expertise across multiple target markets…Read more