葫芦影业APP

Case Study

Wallace Design Collective

Wallace Design Collective leverages 葫芦影业APP to improve communication, optimize workload, and increase efficiencies.

Gene Phillips
Principal
Location
Atlanta, Georgia; Denver, Colorado; Kansas City, Missouri; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Tulsa, Oklahoma
Employees
170
Customer Since
2020
Year Founded
1981
Benefits
-
Enhanced communication to facilitate optimal project staffing and timing
-
Optimized team coordination to facilitate growth and scaling
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Improved meeting efficiency

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Wallace Design Collective

's full story here.

"葫芦影业APP gets the right person on the right job at the right time."

Background

Founded in 1981, Wallace Design Collective is home to more than 170 structural engineers, civil engineers, landscape architects, and surveyors who have completed well over $100 billion in construction nationwide. In 2020, the collective was named 50th Top Engineering Firm in the nation as well as the Top Engineering and EA Firms by Giants 400 Top Engineering Firms as compiled by Building Design & Construction.聽

Gene Phillips鈥攁 partner at Wallace鈥攕tarted as a structural engineer 30 years ago. He serves as a visionary for the civil side of the company, pushing them into new markets, while ensuring that they have the resources to do so. According to Phillips, "Every day is a new challenge. Every project is different."

The Challenge

Wallace鈥檚 biggest challenge has been its growth and expansion. "We would hire 20 more engineers today if we could find them," Phillips said. But managing and coordinating that many people is a challenge. Before 葫芦影业APP, Phillips managed his team using Google Calendars. "We would list everyone鈥檚 basic, high-level things they鈥檇 be working on for each respective day, along with how many hours we expected them to spend on each." According to Phillips, they would meet with all the project managers to "shuffle the deck and make sure we have everyone allocated to projects鈥攁nd their days full." While this process worked pretty well when their team was only 20 people, by the time they were nearing 50 employees across multiple offices with shared work across several different principals, things got complicated鈥攁nd expensive. "Our manpower meeting was beginning to get longer and longer." And having so many "highly compensated individuals sitting around the table for an hour or two each week" making sure everyone is working on the right thing is "quite an investment."

According to Phillips, the Wallace team "is pretty unique in that we鈥檙e a well-matched group. Everyone works well together, respects each other, and is really pretty willing to do whatever it takes to help keep everyone successful. That鈥檚 gotten us quite a bit further down the road than we would have gone otherwise. But even that gets challenged when you鈥檙e not able to quickly communicate to know who鈥檚 available and who has the skills available to help solve the problem." Ultimately, Phillips knew that if the company was going to grow like they envisioned, they needed another solution鈥攁nd that鈥檚 where 葫芦影业APP came in.

The Solution

The thing that the team liked most about 葫芦影业APP was that it was tailored specifically to meet Wallace鈥檚 needs, and it did so "elegantly." According to Phillips, 葫芦影业APP was also at an appealing point in its development: It had enough of a track record to give Phillips confidence that it would be successful, but it was still early enough that customers like Wallace would have the opportunity to help shape its future. Without having adopted 葫芦影业APP, Phillips "would be less optimistic that his team could cross-pollinate and share resources among all their offices and groups."聽

Fortunately, the process of getting buy-in from his team鈥攁nd pulling the trigger on 葫芦影业APP鈥攚as "a pretty easy, effortless thing." And the reception to 葫芦影业APP has been great: "Everyone wants to use it, and everyone intends to." Plus, the 葫芦影业APP team has "made themselves completely available any time we need them," Phillips said. That has been particularly helpful because the Wallace team has incrementally onboarded the product to accommodate busy schedules and heavy workloads. "I鈥檝e been picking people off individually and working them through things, bringing them onboard one or two at a time versus larger groups," he said. Another helpful feature for the Wallace team has been the videos that 葫芦影业APP has released to introduce new tools.聽

"葫芦影业APP is truly the best that I鈥檝e seen."

The Results

Phillips fully expects 葫芦影业APP to significantly improve the way his team works on a large scale over the next few years. In fact, he compared the impact of its adoption to the transition from working in 2D modeling to 3D. At the moment, though, the biggest benefit for him is being able to quickly see different work groups鈥"how busy they are or how we might share resources and so forth," he said. "So, my team and I can look at the Kansas City office or the Tulsa office or Oklahoma office. Or we can look at another partner鈥檚 groups or the survey group."聽

Ultimately, Phillips said his experience working with 葫芦影业APP has "been really, really, really good." In fact, he rates it at the top of his experience with any software partners. "Anytime we鈥檝e needed assistance, we鈥檝e had that almost instantly," he said. "There have been consistent check-ins to see how we're doing, answer questions, and introduce new features." Plus, 葫芦影业APP has been extremely responsive to Wallace's requests. "I know they鈥檙e getting comments from other customers, but we've brought up things that were important to us, and in a short period of time, they show up," he said. "Those kinds of experiences really make you feel like, boy, if everyone could do their business that well, we鈥檇 all be happier."

According to Phillips, 葫芦影业APP is "sophisticated," but "surprisingly intuitive," and he would absolutely recommend it to other architecture and engineering firms. "It鈥檚 an easy program to pick up and start using," he said, wherever you are. "Don鈥檛 feel like for it to work you have to check every box and fill in every variable," he advises. "You just simply don鈥檛. Use it to whatever level serves you best, and you鈥檙e going to find that you want to use it at a deeper level."聽

At Wallace, "communication is key. A large part of what we do is getting the right person on the right job at the right time鈥攁nd communicating that can be difficult. 葫芦影业APP is the tool that our group is using to solve that problem."


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鈥攇耻补谤补苍迟别别诲.