Strategic Planning and Business Development
This domain tests whether you can set direction for a construction professional firm, analyse its environment, choose where to compete, and convert strategy into business development action with realistic resourcing.
Core rules and concepts
- Strategy has levels: vision and mission, corporate objectives, business-unit strategy, then functional and project plans. An objective is a destination; a strategy is the chosen route.
- External analysis uses PESTLE (political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental) and Porter's five forces (rivalry, buyer power, supplier power, new entrants, substitutes).
- Internal analysis uses the resource-based view: resources must be valuable, rare, hard to imitate and organisationally supported to become sustained advantage.
- SWOT is a synthesis, not a list. Each strength or weakness should be matched to an opportunity or threat to produce an action (the TOWS logic).
- Ansoff's matrix gives four growth routes: market penetration, product development, market development and diversification; diversification carries the highest risk because both market and offering are new.
- Porter's generic strategies are cost leadership, differentiation and focus. Being "stuck in the middle" usually means competing on price without the cost base to sustain it.
- Objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
Worked example
A quantity surveying consultancy earns 70 per cent of fee income from one developer, which announces it will delay new launches. The concentration is a clear threat. Market penetration (winning more work from the same client) is limited because the client is shrinking. Unrelated diversification into property sales fails the resource test: no sales capability, no capital. The defensible options are product development (adding 5D BIM measurement and claims support for existing clients) and market development (prequalifying with two new developers and a state agency). Both use existing measurement capability; the recommendation is to pursue both, with a bid/no-bid rule requiring a named lead and available capacity before tendering.
Traps that cost marks
Listing SWOT items with no implication; confusing an objective with a strategy; proposing diversification without capability or cash; and ignoring bid/no-bid discipline so that business development wins work the firm cannot staff.