Guys, we have a major upset on the not-anticipated Top 50 Construction Accounting Firms list Construction Executive puts out every year. CLA has been ousted from the top spot by CBIZ. Rather, CLA was ousted by CBIZ because CBIZ merged with last year’s 5th constructioniest firm Marcum last July thus allowing the merged firm to leapfrog their way to the top.
Here’s the top 10 for 2025 with last year’s ranking in parentheses:
- CBIZ (8/5)
- CLA (1)
- Forvis Mazars, LLP (2)
- Baker Tilly (3)
- Crowe (4)
- Wipfli (6)
- Moss Adams (9)
- Plante Moran (7)
- CohnReznick (10)
- Eide Bailly (11)
If we compare CBIZ’s 2025 stats:
To Marcum and CBIZ’s stats from 2024:
…we can see the combined firm came in far under the 5,559 clients CBIZ and MHM/Marcum had between them in 2024, perhaps due to MHM not being in the mix anymore?
Let’s give a low energy golf clap to this year’s constructioniest firm winners.
I don’t get it. Big 4 firms, BDO, and Grant Thornton don’t have construction clients?
Surely they do? Construction Executive uses an algorithm based on the following to calculate the ranking: 1) 2023 revenues from the firm’s construction practice; 2) number of CPAs in the firm’s construction practice; 3) percentage of the firm’s total revenues derived from its construction practice; 4) number of states in which the firm is licensed to practice; 5) year in which the construction practice was established; and 6) number of AEC clients served during fiscal year 2023.
Do the big firms have actual construction practices like the firms on this list? Idk. I’ll ask CE.
Forvis Mazars beat CLA year before last.
I think for construction people are just looking for a low cost provider and these smaller firms have developed a niche. No one sees the need to pay a Big 4 firm hundreds of thousands of dollars for that. Same thing happened with Marcum doing all those SPAC audits a few years ago, they were doing them on the cheap.
That is my take too. Construction companies can be serviced by large local/regional firms who have a construction niche. The B4 don’t even list construction on their websites
Hi Adrienne!
I enjoy reading your articles every morning, i tell my boss about whats going in the accounting world and he just simply says get back to work…so i’m gonna get back to reading some more of your articles 🙂
Forvis Mazars bumped out CLA year before last.
MHM is still in the mix just as much as ever – it was just rebranded to CBIZ CPA’s PC, so that doesn’t actually explain the decline in aggregate clients post-merger.
CBiz (I hate that name) also merged in Sommerset CPAs a couple years ago and Sommerset had a national construction niche.