Signs of the Times: Firms Comment on How Today's Economy is Impacting Business (Feature‪)‬

It was the elephant in the room when the HEALTHCARE DESIGN and Healthcare Building Ideas teams started discussing this year's architecture/engineering and construction firm rankings: the economy. Would we see a drastic fall off in numbers this year? Would some firms be less willing to participate if its numbers were significantly lower, lest they look weak compared to their peers? And most importantly, how exactly is the financial crunch impacting your business? Rather than speculate, we decided to cut to the chase and simply ask the firms directly. And so, on the submission form was the following optional editorial question: Given the current economic climate, how would you compare the developing 2009 market with the 2008 data that you submitted? What follows here are some of the answers we received that we felt shed the best insights on the state of the industry, both from a firm-by-firm and a universal point of view.