The Hub

Digital and cultural transformation

Perkins&Will was looking to become a more collaborative and transparent culture. With the end goal in mind, there was a need for a digital firmwide knowledge management system that could help create more collaborative and transparent processes. There was a need for a centralized database that tracks all projects, clients, and people information to help everyone's day-to-day activities. It was critical to address how to collect and structure information, in addition to understanding how to translate and deliver the information into knowledge.

Core Responsibilities:

Reported to Chief Information Officer and Chief Marketing Officer

Product Management: Bridged IT and Marketing to Finance, HR, and all Design Practices (Healthcare, Education, Corporate/Commercial, Culture/Civic, Urban Design, Consulting etc.)

Design Strategy: Creating personas, conducting Interviews, and review wireframes from UX designer

Data Visualization: (Dashboards and automated reports)

Data Knowledge Management (recruited and mentored 3 team members)

Change Communications + Training

How it started

While working at Perkins&Will, I informally became a contact point for many miscellaneous questions from around the firm. The questions varied from specific design details to people and their skills. A simple project question such as “How many LEED* certified projects have we completed as a firm?” can relate to different questions ranging from the different certification levels, types, and subtypes. These questions may also relate to other data points such as skills, experience, office, finance, clients, etc. I quickly realized these questions were related to each other and began to document, tag, and share this repository.

After sharing this network map of questions and answers for others to use, I was appointed to Perkins+Will’s Master Data Management initiative under the Chief Information Officer and Chief Marketing Officer. This initiative was to help create a firmwide database, the HUB, and bridge the gap between business, design, and technology. The sustainability (LEED) portion is a small sliver of the database that illustrates each step when creating a larger system.

*LEED is a third party certification for sustainable projects

The Challenge

The challenge started with a shift in workplace processes and routines. We transferred years of institutional knowledge while replacing / improving existing processes.

The data came from various spreadsheets, PDF files, reports, Project Sheets, other systems, and verbal hearsay. We needed an effective communication plan on what the data meant, why we were collecting it, and applying it to a larger picture. We also celebrated all contributors and all small wins to navigate personal sensitivities.

The Process

After fully understanding the existing situation, the next step involved breaking down all rules and steps. In this case I created tables, mapped out relationships, and wire-framed for people with a more technical perspective to understand each of the different certifications. A programmer does not need to know (and may not be interested in knowing) the difference between a LEED CI vs LEED BD+C or BREEAM and other certifications types, subtypes, and levels. What they need is a clear path for the next steps to create the overall product.

The sustainability certification is one small portion of the overall project information that seamlessly fits into the overall database. The end result is an intuitive and simple product that stores all necessary information. After the sustainability information was completed, I repeated these steps with other necessary information and different teams. I worked various groups to create different sections of the Hub. Each section required creating frameworks, mapping out connections, and translating the end-users needs to our IT team.

The teams I worked with include:

Corporate Marketing to create a Sales Pipeline (all potential, awarded but not booked, current, lost projects)

Corporate HR to incorporate all employee data (2,500 current employees)

Corporate Finance to incorporate all financial project information (100,000+ past, present, and future projects)

Design Practices including Healthcare, Education, Corporate/Commercial, Culture/Civic, Urban Design, Consulting etc., to collect and benchmark specific project information (3,000+ projects).

The Final Product

The result was not just a database that includes all information on projects, clients, and project team members, it is a network that continues to help connect people together. It replaced manual time-consuming tasks for Marketers and other practitioners by creating up-to-date branded reports and visual tools that supplement meetings (Sustainability Dashboard for FAQs or Pipeline Health Dashboard for leadership meetings), while actively collecting information that can be used for marketing, operations, design, and/or business development purposes. It creates automated, interactive data visualization in addition to formatted reports and lists to incentivize consistent input.

The database can help with questions such as “We want to work with Client X. Is anyone in our firm talking to them? Has anyone worked with them before? Do we have projects that are similar in our portfolio? Do we have team members with the specific expertise needed to win this project?” It also includes our firmwide sales pipeline (what projects are we going after, what projects were awarded, what projects are booked), firmwide people information, and most recently connected to the firmwide financial information. As a systems-thinker, I was able to bridge the relationship between the IT and Marketing team to various departments such as HR, Operations, Project Managers, and Designers to map out all relationships needed from one type of data set to another.

Implementation and Transformation

For proper implementation, I sent out clear communications to all 2,500+ employees and trained appropriate people for each section of the database. I held initial overview trainings for over 300 employees in addition to in-depth training for 60+ people. Specific people were also equipped to continue to train others on creating accountability and ownership. Each live-session was a step-by-step of all capabilities with specific report usage examples along with Q&A.

All in all, my biggest lesson learned is that for an effective organizational change, overtime as outcomes improve, it becomes harder to trace an individual's direct impact as it multiplies through the organization. Training the future trainers, and giving ownership of the product to others helped scale the transformation and make it resilient. Culture is a tacit order of an organization. A product can help catalyze the change when it creates new norms and process that change the way people work and interact with each other.

Programs used:

Access
SQL
Excel
Tableau
Invision
Illustrator
Photoshop
UltiPro