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APEXADVISORS
1.213.487.3333
Industry — AEC

Architecture, engineering & construction —
credit hides in your design cycles.

Civil, structural, mechanical, electrical and process engineering work routinely qualifies for the R&D tax credit. Most AEC firms under-claim because their internal accountants treat 'iteration' as overhead instead of as qualified research expense.

What qualifies
  • Schematic & design development. Iterative refinement of structural, mechanical or electrical systems against constraints — load, code, energy, schedule — is qualifying research.
  • Constructability & VE studies. Trade-off analyses that evaluate alternative materials or methods to resolve technical uncertainty.
  • BIM & coordination workflows. Building Information Modeling work that integrates trade-specific designs into a buildable whole.
  • In-house tools & scripts. Custom Revit / Rhino / Grasshopper / Dynamo automations developed to solve specific project problems.
Activities that often don't
  • Boilerplate construction documents. Drafting from existing details with no technical uncertainty.
  • Marketing & visualization renderings. Unless they directly support a qualifying design study.
  • Routine project management. The administrative side of the project is excluded; the technical decisions inside it often qualify.
  • Post-construction punch-list work. Once the technical uncertainty is resolved, the activity exits the qualifying window.

Add Section 179D and IC-DISC.

AEC firms working on commercial projects often qualify for 179D as part of design-build relationships — and exporting design services across borders typically qualifies for an IC-DISC structure. We layer the three programs into one engagement so nothing's double-counted.

Discuss your work 1.844.900.APEX