Independent business valuation · Environmental and technical consultancy

You've Had an Offer for Your Consultancy. Is It Fair?

The offer letter puts a number on your fee income. It says much less about how much of that number depends on you and your senior consultants staying, or how much will be held back until they do. An independent valuation answers both, in two working days, before you reply.

Owners of ecology, geotechnical, contaminated land, testing and compliance consultancies tend to contact us at a handful of moments. A larger consultancy or a private equity-backed group has made an approach. Two directors who built the firm together want different things. The senior team has asked about buying the business. Or the founder, still the name on most bids, is wondering when and how to step back.

Each time, the first valuation anyone mentions comes from a party with a reason to pick it. The owner, who knows the clients and the people better than anyone, is usually the one without a figure of their own.

Email Mark for a free discovery call See what a valuation report contains

The stakes

What finding out late costs

An illustrative environmental consultancy with £6.5m of fee income and reported EBITDA of £1.10m. The owner had been told consultancies sell for six times EBITDA and expected about £6.6m. The firm and every figure are fictional.

Illustrative figures, £000
Reported EBITDA	1,100
Owner's salary raised to a market-rate managing director	(75)
Associate director paid below market, salary set at market rate	(40)
Unbilled WIP on closed projects that will never be invoiced	(55)
One-off professional indemnity excess and legal costs added back	35
Maintainable EBITDA	965
Enterprise value at an illustrative 5.0 times	4,825
Cash at completion	700
Bank loan	(150)
Leases on vehicles and site equipment	(90)
Working capital adjustment: monitoring fees billed in advance, work still to do	(120)
Equity value to the owner	5,165

Most of the drop from £6.6m to £5.2m sits in the people and the work-in-progress ledger. Two directors had been paid below what a buyer must pay to replace them, and some unbilled time was never going to turn into invoices. Fees collected in advance for monitoring visits not yet carried out also came off, because the buyer inherits the work without the cash. The 5.0 times multiple is for illustration only. A real valuation sets the multiple from the evidence in your firm and comparable transactions.

The numbers you have been given

Why the numbers you have been given are not neutral

Every valuation an owner hears before a sale comes from someone with a stake in the answer.

The buyer

wants to pay as little as you will accept. Their first figure is an opening position, and their advisers know where consultancy earnings are soft better than you do.

A broker

competing for your instruction has a reason to quote high. A large number wins the mandate. Whether the market agrees comes out months later, usually in due diligence.

Your accountant

knows your numbers better than anyone, but may never have taken a consultancy through a sale or sat across from a buyer's due diligence team.

None of them is acting in bad faith. Each one is answering a different question from the one you are asking, which is what the business is worth to a buyer today and how much of that reaches you.

Independence

Why our valuation is independent

When we value your business, we have no reason to push the number up or down. The fee is fixed and agreed before any work starts, and it is the same whatever the number turns out to be. You are not signing up to a sale, and nothing in the engagement commits you to anything further.

The report is yours. Show it to a buyer, your bank, your accountant or your fellow directors. Every figure in it traces back to one of three valuation methods, with each adjustment explained in the Excel model you receive alongside it.

Owners rarely go on to ask us to sell their business after a valuation, although it has happened. Most come to us for the reason this page exists. They want a number they can trust before someone else tells them what it is.

Who does the work

Who does the work, and what a valuation finds

Mark Ross Roberts FMVA CBCA carries out every valuation himself, with 30 years on the deal side of UK mid-market transactions. The largest corporate group he has negotiated against had a turnover of £3.2bn.

96%
In 96% of completed Achieve mandates, the price agreed at heads of terms is the price paid at completion.
Source: Achieve Corporation mandate records

The two summaries below show the kind of finding a valuation produces. They are examples written for this page, not records of real mandates, and they carry that label on the website until real anonymised deals replace them.

Illustrative example

Ecology and environmental consultancy, South West

Turnover: £2m to £4m
Buyer: A private equity-backed environmental services group
What the valuation found: Fee income had grown fast on biodiversity net gain assessments, and much of it came from small housing sites. The valuation separated that work from the multi-year habitat monitoring contracts and tested the small-site income against the exemption for developments of 0.2 hectares or below that applies from 6 August 2026. The buyer had priced all of it as if it would repeat.
Outcome: The owner answered the first offer with his own split of recurring and one-off income, and the price was agreed on that basis.

Illustrative example

Geotechnical and contaminated land consultancy with an in-house laboratory, East of England

Turnover: £5m to £7m
Buyer: A larger UK engineering consultancy
What the valuation found: The laboratory's MCERTS accreditation for soil testing was a large part of what the buyer wanted. Lock-up was long, though, and some unbilled WIP dated from site investigations finished more than a year earlier. The valuation wrote that WIP down before due diligence did, and modelled the earn-out the buyer was likely to propose around the two founding directors whose names were on the framework submissions.
Outcome: The price agreed at heads of terms was the price paid at completion, with an earn-out the directors had already costed.

Sector insight

What buyers pay for in environmental and technical consultancy

Buyers of consultancies are buying fee-earners and the clients who keep instructing them. They pay more where that income looks likely to continue after the founder steps back, and a data room shows them quickly whether it will.

Accreditations a competitor cannot buy quickly. A UKAS-accredited laboratory is the clearest example. The Environment Agency states that sites it regulates must use laboratories accredited to its MCERTS scheme for the chemical testing of soil (Environment Agency, Using MCERTS for the chemical testing of soil, 2021). Building and holding that accreditation takes years of audited method validation.
Demand created by regulation. Biodiversity net gain has been mandatory for major developments in England since 12 February 2024, requiring a 10% gain and habitats maintained for at least 30 years (GOV.UK, Understanding biodiversity net gain, updated July 2026). Climate-related financial disclosure became mandatory for large private companies and LLPs for financial years starting on or after 6 April 2022 (GOV.UK, 2022). Buyers ask how much of your pipeline those rules create and how exposed it is to the next change.
Recurring monitoring and compliance work. Groundwater monitoring, permit compliance, habitat management plans and annual testing contracts repeat each year. A buyer values them above one-off site assessments won on price.
Framework places. Places on frameworks with local authorities, utilities, housebuilders and infrastructure clients give a buyer visible work. A buyer will ask for the call-off history, because a place that has produced little work adds little to the price.
Fee-earners who stay, and a client list that knows more than one name. Associate directors who lead their own client relationships and run projects without the owner reviewing every report. Utilisation and charge-out rates that hold up without the founder working weekends.

What pulls the value down

The discounts in consultancy deals are predictable. Buyers apply them because they have been caught by each one before.

The owner is the consultancy. Where clients ask for you by name and your CV is what wins the bids, a buyer assumes part of the income leaves with you. Part of the price then moves into an earn-out or deferred consideration tied to you and key staff staying.
Key people with no reason to stay. Senior consultants without equity, long notice periods or restrictive covenants can resign the week after completion and take clients with them. Buyers check contracts, and then ask who has already been approached by a competitor.
Long lock-up. Debtor days plus WIP days measure how long fee-earning time takes to become cash. Long lock-up ties up working capital, and old unbilled WIP is often written off by the buyer's accountants.
Professional indemnity claims history. A pattern of claims, a rising excess or a difficult renewal is found in due diligence and used to push for a specific indemnity or a retention from the price.
Income tied to a rule that can change. When a regulation exempts part of the market, as the 6 August 2026 exemption for BNG on sites of 0.2 hectares or below did (GOV.UK, 2026), a buyer discounts the income that depended on it.

Most of these can be fixed, or at least evidenced, given twelve months' notice. A valuation done early shows which ones apply to your firm and roughly what each is costing you in price.

Method

How we value an environmental or technical consultancy, and why the multiple comes last

Anyone can take a year's EBITDA from the filed accounts and multiply it by a number someone quoted at a conference. A buyer's advisers will not price your consultancy that way, and neither do we. The multiple is the last thing we set. It comes out of the work below and differs for every business, so we do not publish a typical range.

Before any multiple is applied, we test the business on:

Its defensible moat. What stops a rival consultancy, or a client's in-house team, from taking the work? Laboratory accreditations, specialist expertise in short supply, framework places and the time a client would need to brief a new adviser on a site with a long history.
The market around it. A PESTLE review of the pressures on the firm's clients and the rules that create the work: planning policy and BNG, environmental permitting, contaminated land regimes, net zero reporting, housebuilding volumes and public spending on infrastructure. Local planning authorities' own capacity matters too. A 2022 survey commissioned by Defra found fewer than 10% of local authority respondents thought their expertise and resources would be adequate to deliver BNG (ALGE and ADEPT, reported by CIEEM, 2022).
Its competitive position. Porter's Five Forces applied to the firm itself: the buying power of large developers and utilities on fee rates, the power of experienced staff to demand pay, the threat of new entrants such as ex-employees setting up on their own, substitutes such as software and remote sensing, and rivalry on the same tenders.
Its real competitive edge. The specific reason clients keep instructing this firm, and whether that reason survives the owner stepping back from bids and sign-off.
Investment in people, laboratory and systems. Whether the firm has kept up with training, chartership, accreditation audits, equipment calibration and project management software, and what must be spent to make the forecast achievable. In a consultancy this is the equivalent of capital expenditure.
Frameworks and contracts. Framework places, term contracts and multi-year monitoring agreements, and how much of next year's fee income they already cover.
Quality of earnings. Whether profits in the years before a sale were flattered by holding back hires, training or salary rises, or by valuing WIP generously. Rising margins alongside overworked senior staff and longer lock-up is the pattern buyers look for, and they find it.

Only then do we value the business three ways: on maintainable earnings, on a discounted cash flow of its own forecast, and on the net value of its assets. Where the methods disagree, the gap shows where a buyer will push.

On published multiples. BDO's Private Company Price Index put the average UK trade buyer multiple at 9.8 times EBITDA in Q3 2024, and 12.2 times for private equity (BDO, PCPI Q3 2024). Over the previous four years, the trade deals behind that index averaged an enterprise value of £14.5m (BDO, PCPI Q1 2024). An average built from larger businesses says nothing about your people, your frameworks or your lock-up. We use such figures only as one cross-check against the result of the work above.

We value businesses up to £450m enterprise value. The fixed fees below cover businesses with turnover from £500k to £30m, and larger businesses are scoped on the discovery call.

The accounts

Where consultancy accounts mislead

Filed accounts for consultancies hide several things a buyer's accountants will find. We correct for them before anyone else does.

Unbilled WIP that will never be billed. Time recorded against fixed-fee jobs that overran, or against projects the client has stopped paying for, sits in the balance sheet as an asset and in the profit as income. A buyer writes it off and reprices.
Directors paid below market. An owner or associate director drawing a low salary and taking dividends makes EBITDA look higher than a buyer can achieve. A market-rate replacement is costed in.
Fees billed in advance. Annual monitoring and compliance contracts invoiced up front put cash in the bank before the work is done. A buyer treats the unearned part as a liability it takes on.
Professional indemnity costs. A one-off excess may be added back. A recurring pattern of claims is a cost of doing business and stays in.
Subconsultants and associates. Specialists engaged on a freelance basis can make margins look better or worse than the employed team's real economics. We show earnings with the costs that would continue after a sale.
Research and development tax credits. Credits received are real cash, but buyers treat them as uncertain. We show earnings with and without them.

The offer

The valuation, the fee and how to start

You receive a valuation memorandum, a written report and a locked Excel model, delivered in 2 working days. Mark Ross Roberts FMVA CBCA does the work himself. Nothing is passed to a junior analyst.

Annual turnover	Independent valuation	With funding feasibility
£500k to £5m	£1,200	£1,700
£5m to £10m	£2,000	£2,500
£10m to £30m	£3,000	£3,500
Above £30m	Scoped on the call	Scoped on the call

All fees exclude VAT. Funding feasibility adds the bank debt a lender is likely to advance against the business and tests deal structures on debt service cover, which matters if your senior team wants to buy the firm or you are buying a competitor.

How to start: email Mark at mark@achieve-corporation.com with a line on the business and what the valuation is for. You get a reply the same day, then a free discovery call that confirms the right report, the fee and the turnaround. Nothing is payable until you agree to go ahead.

Email Mark for a free discovery call

Questions owners ask

Frequently asked questions

I've had an offer for my consultancy. How do I know if it's fair?

Compare it with an independent valuation built from your own accounts, before you reply. The valuation shows what a buyer is likely to pay, how much of the headline reaches you after debt, working capital and any earn-out, and which parts of the offer are open to negotiation.

Is an independent valuation worth it if I already have a broker's figure?

A broker's figure is often given to win your instruction. An independent valuation has no stake in the number, shows every adjustment, and gives you something to test the broker's figure against. At a fixed fee from £1,200 excluding VAT, it costs less than one point off the multiple on almost any deal.

Will you try to sell me a sale mandate afterwards?

No. The valuation is a standalone engagement at a fixed fee, and you are under no obligation to instruct us for anything else. Most owners use the report to negotiate with a buyer they already have, or to plan their next few years.

How much is my consultancy worth?

There is no reliable rule of thumb. The value depends on how much of the fee income would survive you stepping back, how many of your fee-earners would stay, the frameworks and monitoring contracts behind next year's work, and whether recent profits are real. A multiple of EBITDA comes at the end of that work, followed by deductions for debt and working capital at completion. Published averages describe larger, different businesses.

My best consultants could leave after a sale. How does that affect the price and any earn-out?

Buyers price that risk directly. Where income depends on a few named people, part of the price is usually deferred or paid as an earn-out tied to those people staying and to fee targets. The valuation identifies who the income depends on and models what an earn-out is likely to pay you in practice, so you can judge the structure before you agree to it.

Does a UKAS-accredited laboratory add value?

Usually, where clients need the accreditation to submit results. The Environment Agency requires MCERTS-accredited laboratories for chemical testing of soil on sites it regulates. Buyers check the scope of accreditation, the audit history and how much of the testing income comes from outside clients.

How do buyers treat unbilled work in progress?

They test it line by line. Time a client will pay for is counted, while WIP on overrun fixed-fee jobs or disputed projects is written off, which reduces both earnings and the working capital you are paid for at completion.

We've had a professional indemnity claim. Will a buyer find out?

Yes. Claims history and insurer correspondence are standard due diligence requests. Disclosing it early, with the facts and the cost, usually leads to a specific indemnity or retention. A claim the buyer uncovers for itself is usually priced more harshly, because it also raises the question of what else was not disclosed.

How long does a valuation take?

Two working days from receiving your accounts and management information, at a fixed fee agreed before work starts.

Is the valuation confidential?

Yes. An NDA is available before you share any figures, and your staff, clients and subconsultants are not contacted.

Sources:

Valuation guides: EBITDA analysis · Earnings multiples · Asset-based valuation · Discounted cash flow

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