Customer Success Story
Durrant

Leading Architecture and Engineering Firm Improves Data Visibility Firm—Wide with Advanced Project Management Software

The Challenge

As Durrant began a period of growth and expansion, the firm realized it needed to streamline product management and improve business processes.

“We needed a comprehensive solution to fulfill our complex project management needs,” said Connie Haakinson, Operations Administrator for Durrant. “Our back office data lacked integration with project management, customer relationship management and other important functions. We had been spending time with our project managers, trying to teach them how to ensure they stayed within budget and on schedule. We were also attempting to manually provide accurate estimates.”

The Solution

Durrant started by evaluating several software solutions on the market. In 2003, Durrant saw a demo of advanced project management software from Deltek. This software promised to integrate Durrant's end-to-end business processes by automating the planning, tracking and administration of the firm's resources and projects. Furthermore, this comprehensive enterprise management solution was designed specifically for firms facing the exact challenges Durrant was facing at the time.

Deltek's project management software proved to be the comprehensive solution Durrant was looking for. Advanced project management software allows companies like Durrant to manage all aspects of their business including project accounting, payroll and client relationship management.

The Benefits

Durrant uses Deltek's project management software to track and manage more than 300 active projects, as well as numerous leads and opportunities in their pipeline.

“With an eight-month design schedule and a one-year construction schedule, the advanced project management software has helped to quicken the adjustment of resources on the project—adding a quicker response rate to the project needs and, ultimately, a quicker response to the client,” said Paul Greco, Principal and Project Manager at Durrant.

By inputting their project data into the system, which included budget and estimate to complete, Durrant's project manager are able to see a clear picture of a project's workflow—ultimately enabling them to track against the baseline on a daily basis to see where dollars are being spent. “Project managers can access data at any time, which is a tremendous asset to those in charge,” said Greco.

“We can also see where all of the staffing commitments have been made and track how our production hours are being applied on a daily basis,” said Gary Chappell, Managing Principal at Durrant's St. Louis office. “With the use of staff applied as a coordinated team across several offices for large projects, the browser-based design of the software has been especially important to be able to gather, plan and monitor those hours wherever they are located.”

“We are making incredible strides in the planning area,” Haakinson said. “Previously we were entering time and expense data into spreadsheets, which meant that our project managers had to wait until the end of each month to be able to view their data. We could never tell where the true need for resources was, and our data was dependent on correct entry. Now, we can see that information in an accurate, timely fashion and, more importantly, we can trust the data. Eliminating the data entry step greatly reduced the number of clerical errors.”

For the first time ever Durrant is also able to look at workload firm-wide, across their multiple locations. The Deltek solution allows them to know what's going on at every office—how many projects, where they stand, who is assigned to them—and get a real-time snapshot across the firm. “This has greatly streamlined our business, as we can shift work from one office to another to maximize our available resources,” said Haakinson.

According to Mark Pasker, Controller at Durrant, the software's robust CRM capabilities have also played a key role in streamlining Durrant's business processes. “[It] has brought our marketing, accounting and project management departments together,” Pasker said. “For the first time, these departments are regularly meeting to track and follow up on leads, assign values to each lead and track hit rates on these leads through multiple stages. Not only is the software helping us understand what's coming down the pipeline so we can streamline our resources accordingly, but it is also helping our firm get a clear understanding of how our marketing efforts are being received.”

“Overall,” says Haakinson, “it's far easier now to enter and to extract data from our system, and we save a lot of time that would otherwise be lost in tailoring and analyzing critical project data. Essentially, the project management software has integrated all of our critical project, client and contact info into a single database.”

About Durrant

A leader in the architecture/engineering (A/E) industry for almost 75 years, Durrant offers comprehensive A/E and project delivery services around the globe. Ranked number 263 on Engineering News Record's prestigious list of the top 500 design firms in 2006, Durrant has more than 300 employees and is headquartered in Dubuque, Iowa with 10 additional locations across the country. The firm is renowned for several notable architecture and engineering projects, including retail, hotel, restaurant, housing and prison facilities across the world. Among the highlights are the ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center of Hawaii,a multi-purpose tower for the Bate Group and Korea's Disney World.