Know which teams are overloaded months ahead, and how long your backlog will last.
Empirilo turns the project backlog and execution data your firm already has into a capacity forecast: how loaded each discipline is, month by month, and how many months of work you have in hand.
Empirilo is working today, and we're taking on a small group of pilot firms.
| Team | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Whole firm | 88% | 91% | 94% | 96% | 92% | 86% |
| Mechanical | 82% | 84% | 79% | 76% | 74% | 70% |
| Electrical | 97% | 112% | 128% | 131% | 118% | 99% |
| Civil | 86% | 78% | 74% | 80% | 84% | 90% |
A firm-wide number hides the real risk
Most firms plan capacity in a spreadsheet or with a tool that's not built for how they actually work. By the time the picture is clear, the decisions it should have informed, like hiring, staffing a new project or managing to revised start dates, have already been made.
And the firm can look comfortably loaded while one discipline is booked well past its target capacity and another is running low on work.
What Empirilo shows you
- Load by discipline, month by month
- Each team's forecast work against its capacity at your firm's utilization targets, so you see an overload while there's still time to act on it.
- Your runway
- How many months of signed backlog you have at current team cost, and how many more if your bids land, weighted by your odds of winning them.
- What changed this week
- The won bid, the slipped start date or the change order that moved the forecast, so a new number always comes with a reason.
- Which numbers to trust
- Flags where the forecast rests on shaky data, like an unconfirmed date or a phase past due, and shows how much fee is riding on it.
How it works
-
Start from the data you already have
Empirilo works from the project, contract and billing data in your accounting and project system: Deltek Ajera, BQE Core and others.
-
Enhance with what your team knows
Which project dates may slip, how work is typically distributed by discipline, which bids you're chasing and which teams might work on them.
-
See the forecast each week
Load, runway and what changed, refreshed as your teams do the work.
Pilot firms get hands-on setup and support from us, so there's no new system for your team to keep up.
Who it's for
Engineering and architecture firms of roughly 20 to 150 people doing mostly fixed-fee project work. Empirilo is built for the whole chain that runs capacity: the principals and department heads who decide when to hire and what work to take on, and the project managers who make those plans work day to day.
Who's behind Empirilo
Empirilo is led by founder Matt Simmons and works with a bench of software and data specialists who help firms get set up and running. The product is shaped with input from principals at engineering firms and advisors across consulting and professional services.
Matt Simmons, Founder
Matt holds an engineering degree from the University of Texas at Austin and has spent more than 15 years leading delivery teams in technical consulting and R&D: staffing projects, timing work, and living with payroll and commitments that arrive on schedule even when revenue doesn't. He started Empirilo to give firm leaders a clear, current answer to the capacity question, from data they already own.
See where your firm's capacity stands
Book a 30-minute walkthrough. We'll show you the product, hear how your firm plans capacity today, and you'll leave with a few practical ideas, whether or not Empirilo is right for you.