Takeaways for Leaders
Under-positioned is not under-marketed.
More visibility would only have amplified a list of capabilities. The move was claiming one position and leading the climate conversation.
Choose the position the research can defend.
Executive interviews and voice-of-customer research tested which position TRC could credibly own, not which one sounded best.
Build the operating model with the brand.
A leaner marketing model, a smaller in-house team, and the right partners and technology let the new brand scale without added headcount.
The Challenge
A 7,000-person engineering firm built by acquisition, fragmented, acronym-heavy, with no clear position in the climate and sustainability category that mattered most to its future.
Our Approach
Executive interviews, voice-of-customer research, and brand sprints to find the one position TRC could credibly own. Saxum leveraged Bedrock Alignment℠ to understand, from thousands of potential positioning strategies, which positions had the highest chance of success.
Bedrock Alignment℠ Finding
Bedrock Alignment allowed us to start with the objective, then find the one position that gets a company there.
Key Decision Shift
TRC wasn’t under-marketed, it was under-positioned; the move wasn’t more visibility. It was claiming one position and leading the climate conversation instead of listing capabilities.
The First 90 Days
Ninety days to turn the position into the platform is the opening move, not the whole plan. While we onboard TRC onto Bedrock OS℠, our AI-native platform for long-term strategic program management, we take the priority items that make the position real first.
Priority items, first 90 days
- Enterprise Brand Strategy and Platform
- Defined Climate-and-Sustainability Point of View
- Integrated Go-to-Market Plan
- Rollout Strategy
A full one-year plan comes out of every Bedrock Alignment℠ engagement. In this case, TRC took on partial ownership of executing part of the plan in-house and Saxum served as a Chief Strategy Office, orchestrating thew work across all strategies.
The Long-Term Value
A leaner marketing model: a smaller in-house team, with the right partners and technology to scale the new brand without added headcount. In 2026, Warburg Pincus sold TRC to WSP for $3.3 billion.
What This Means for Your Organization
If your firm grew by acquisition and still talks like a list of capabilities, the fix is a position, not more visibility. Wherever your firm is in that process, we are happy to share how we think about it.