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Firm profile
HDG Architecture is a multi-faceted architecture and design studio founded in 2011 by Josh Hissong and Armando Hurtado. They built the business into a multifaceted organization that includes architecture, interior design, fabrication, branding, graphic design, and marketing services. Since 2011, they have completed over 400 projects, ranging from residential remodels to ground-up mixed-use, while constantly striving to improve the process.
Challenges with First-Time Clients
HDG has big aspirations for the kind of mark they can have on their local community. In any given month, they have 50-60 active projects across a variety of project types with just a staff of 13.
With that comes its own set of challenges.
For many of their clients it’s their first project, meaning they are not sensitive to project timelines.
On top of that, without a tool to effectively track projects, they had a nebulous view of the weeks or months to come. All of this led to the team struggling to meet deadlines.
Stop Living Deadline to Deadline
Since bringing Monograph onboard, they’ve been able to get a clear picture of where projects are at and make adjustments in real-time.
When a client is causing delays or is indecisive, HDG can easily extend a particular phase in Monograph and have those changes reflected downstream in their project plan.
They can re-allocate more resources to projects that are behind to ensure that deadlines are met without just a few employees needing to be under duress.
This boosts transparency across the team—every person in the office knows what’s expected and when it’s expected by looking at the MoneyGantt showing how much fee is consumed relative to project deadlines.
Overall, it has led to a much better, calmer office atmosphere where there is confidence about ability to hit deadlines without a last-minute scramble.
“Monograph helped us to not be constantly struggling with deadline after deadline. The ability to track projects has allowed us to know what's expected in the coming weeks and months. And so rather than jumping from deadline to deadline, we're anticipating several weeks or months out what's coming down the pike and what projects or phases need to be completed.”
- Dave Buescher, Chief Operations Officer
“Just Right” Project Staffing
Balancing workloads and ensuring full utilization while preventing burnout is a huge challenge for architecture firms. This problem is exacerbated by lack of insight into both project needs and employee staffing.
With Monograph, HDG sees into the future to see the work that needs to be done alongside the availability of architects and interior designers.
With that, they can easily assign work to employees that have bandwidth and not overwork others.
“I'm no longer needing to juggle different people on projects because we're putting out fires. What we're really able to do now is select the right person for a project because we can look out and telegraph out into the future.”
- Dave Buescher, Chief Operations Officer
A Platform that Makes Sense for Architects
Monograph was built for architects, and therefore it brings together important aspects of practice that traditionally live in disparate pieces of software.
Rather than having to chase data across different platforms, HDG can do project plans, timesheets, staffing, invoicing, and more out of a single platform.
This has resulted in considerable time savings.
“It's allowed us to spend more time with quality control and quality assurance because I'm not spending my days trying to figure out staffing, projections and schedules. I'm actually able to spend more time sitting down with clients or with our drawing sets to make sure that we're putting out the best product possible.”
- Dave Buescher, Chief Operations Officer
If you would like to try the software that “makes sense to an architect”, get started today.
