CASE STUDY

From Executive Benchmarking to Firmwide Compensation Governance

October 29, 2026

An environmental engineering, ecological consulting, and river restoration firm with offices across the United States first engaged BPM to answer a narrow question: how did the pay of its CEO and senior leadership compare to the market? That initial executive benchmarking project soon grew into a much broader, firmwide compensation initiative as new needs came into focus.

Problem 

After the initial executive benchmarking work, the firm’s leadership team identified a deeper, organization-wide issue: compensation guidance was being interpreted inconsistently across regional leaders, leaving the firm without a formal philosophy or decision-making framework to guide pay decisions. The CEO and leadership team recognized the need to clarify guidance around promotions and compensation adjustments, establish consistent compensation decision practices across leadership, determine the firm’s target market positioning, evaluate geographic pay differentials across its multiple office locations, and improve transparency and consistency in how compensation decisions were made and communicated firmwide.

Solution 

BPM began by conducting executive compensation benchmarking, delivering a market positioning and gap analysis for the CEO and senior leadership team. Building on that foundation, BPM expanded into a full compensation benchmarking effort across the broader organization, using multiple survey sources and market data sets, including job matching validation and compensation ratio analysis, and identified potential pay equity and market competitiveness risks along the way. That work culminated in a formal benchmarking report, executive presentations, a line-by-line employee compensation analysis, and supporting data files and models the firm could use going forward.

From there, BPM facilitated a multisession compensation philosophy project with the firm’s executive and leadership team, working through compensation values, market benchmark targets, location differentials, salary increase practices, promotion practices, other pay factors, and how the firm communicates about compensation transparently. That process culminated in a comprehensive compensation philosophy and policy document, along with guidance on compensation governance, how to manage the aging of market data over time, salary structure maintenance, and the cadence for ongoing compensation reviews.

Outcome 

The firm now has a market-informed compensation foundation and a formal compensation philosophy that leadership helped shape and can apply consistently across every region and office. That framework has aligned leadership around a shared set of compensation practices and positioned the firm for ongoing compensation governance and future market reviews, rather than the inconsistent, ad hoc guidance that originally prompted the engagement. BPM has served as the firm’s trusted compensation advisor since 2023, continuing to support its leadership through evolving compensation and workforce challenges as the organization grows.

Ready to Bring Consistency to Your Compensation Practices?

Whether your organization is scaling across multiple regions or simply needs a clearer, more consistent framework for compensation decisions, BPM’s compensation consulting services can help you build the governance and philosophy to support it.