Based in Bethesda, MD, Clark Construction Group, LLC, is one of the nation's most experienced and respected providers of construction services. With more than 4,000 employees and $4 billion in annual revenue, Clark is consistently ranked among the largest general building and civil construction companies in the United States.
Clark Construction’s diverse construction portfolio, specialized divisions, and subsidiaries ensure that each project is matched with appropriate resources and expertise. Through technical skill, preconstruction know-how and self-performance capability, Clark Construction anticipates project challenges, develops solutions that meet clients' objectives and ultimately delivers award-winning projects. Since their early beginnings, Clark has been at the forefront of new technologies and evolving building trends. With this spirit of innovation, Clark was an early adopter of cloud-based collaborative project management systems in 1999.
Review of Systems and Processes
By 2001, Clark Construction had implemented an enterprise collaborative project management system, the leader in the category at the time, eventually managing over $36 Billion worth of work completely in the cloud. While the technology served them well at the time, their vendor was ultimately acquired and product development and enhancements slowed dramatically. “We were concerned, but to be honest there really wasn’t anything better on the market and migrating to a competing system at that point would have been a lateral move at best,” said Steve Stankiewicz, Application Development Manager.
In 2009, the economic downturn provided the perfect opportunity for Clark to look for ways to improve productivity so that they could emerge from the downturn with a jump on the competition. “Whether it involved changing business processes, seeking better technologies, or making different hires, nothing was off the table,” noted Dave Golden, CIO of Clark Construction Group. The Clark team embarked on a thorough review of all their systems and processes, identifying and documenting what they called “ideal” processes. When the team reviewed their incumbent project management system, the analysis revealed that the amount of time it was taking to execute their ideal processes and return actionable data was markedly inefficient and overly time consuming. “Project Management systems should enhance business processes and allow for quicker decision making, not be a bottleneck,” added Stankiewicz. This inefficiency was not only impacting Clark, but the project owners, subcontractors, architects, and the rest of their project partners. To further compound the issue, the analysis also revealed that their systems were rather inflexible and incapable of easily integrating with other applications, thus making it more difficult to access vital project data when they needed it.
A Solution for the Future
After completing the review of their systems and business processes, Clark set out to find a vendor that would address their challenges today with the flexibility to adapt as their business needs change down the road. Clark reviewed several vendors and even considering building a solution internally, but ultimately selected Kahua. Unlike other systems, Kahua had several key differentiators that Clark found very compelling...
Download the full case study to learn which of Kahua’s key differentiators Clark found compelling and the results of the transition to Kahua.
