Synergy2017 — Conrad Gargett’s performance cycle — Leanne Conley, Conrad Gargett
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Leanne Conley is Conrad Gargett’s chief financial officer and director of human resources. Her talk will examine challenges they’ve faced in consolidating and rationalising data, processes and systems during growth of the practice (organic and through acquisition), and how the practice reports business and project progress and performance to directors in a simple output
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Synergy2017 — Conrad Gargett’s performance cycle — Leanne Conley, Conrad Gargett
- 1. CONRAD GARGETT’S PROJECT PERFORMANCE CYCLE LEANNE CONLEY DIRECTOR, CFO — CONRAD GARGETT
- 2. Est. 1890
- 3. RESIDENTIAL COMMERCIAL HERITAGE EDUCATION LANDSCAPE HEALTH INTERIORS AGED CARE CONRAD GARGETT — DISCIPLINES
- 4. HEALTH Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, South Brisbane
- 7. HERITAGE Old Government House, Brisbane
- 10. How to manage the project data from such a diverse practice?
- 11. 2007 +
- 12. CHALLENGES OF A CHANGING BUSINESS MODEL ORGANIC GROWTH EMPLOYER OF CHOICE SIGNIFICANT PROJECT WINS STRATEGIC RECRUITMENT
- 13. CHALLENGES OF A CHANGING BUSINESS MODEL DONALDSON WORRAD ANCHER MORTLOCK WOOLLEY RIDDEL ARCHITECTURE GROWTH THROUGH MERGERS
- 14. CONRAD GARGETT BUSINESS GROWTH 2000 2005 2010 2015 2017 30 45 80 95 150STAFF NUMBERS
- 15. CHALLENGES OF MERGERS — ALIGNING TO SINGLE FINANCIAL PLATFORM
- 16. BUSINESS MANAGEMENT IMPERATIVES The directors seek to understand: Project performance — progress and profitability On a monthly basis On a project life basis On a project sector level On a project leader level Analysis of WIP for invoicing Projected work / programme (pipeline management) Cash flow
- 17. ONE PAGE REPORT
- 19. THE REPORT
- 20. HOW WE CREATE THE REPORT FROM SYNERGY
- 21. Sectors and project leaders as attributes HOW TO INTERPRET THE REPORT
- 23. BENEFITS SUMMARY Project health is being monitored more closely ID performing / underperforming client groups and sectors Good visibility over the business. Fast and efficient! Easy to navigate — anyone can do it!
Editor's Notes
- Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I have been invited to speak to you about the Project Performance Cycle of Conrad Gargett and how we use Total Synergy to monitor, control and drive the financial outcomes of our architectural projects. But first a little about Conrad Gargett.
- 127 years ago when buildings were designed with horse and carriage in mind, Conrad Gargett was established here in Brisbane….. Our firm is one of Queensland’s oldest practices, and in the context of Queensland itself being only 150 years old, our longevity is quite an achievement.
- Who we are Conrad Gargett is at the forefront of architecture in Australia. A progressive firm with a vibrant legacy of prominent and enduring designs. Since 1890 Conrad Gargett has continuously evolved. Operating from Brisbane, Sydney, Newcastle and Townsville, Conrad Gargett delivers projects nationally and internationally, across a diverse range of sectors including health, education, heritage, residential, commercial, defence, infrastructure and aged care. We also offer experienced services in Interior design and Landscape Architecture Conrad Gargett has been recognised with over 100 Australian Institute of Architects, National Trust and industry awards. I am a Director and the CFO of Conrad Gargett, and I have been a part of the team for the past 18 years.
- Many of you know Brisbane’s newest health facility, the Lady Cilento childrens Hospital, recognized internationally as best practice in child health
- Conrad garget completed the entire Australian Catholic University campus at Banyo over a 15 year period
- A project close to where I live, this is a residential project which will invigorate the Coorparoo precinct with over 300 apartments, retail and cinemas
- Restoration of old government house undertaken by our heritage architects in preparation for the former Qld 150 year celebrations.
- So our firm works nationally in most geographical locations
- As well as internationally to places such as London, Africa, China, New Zealand, Asia and USA.
- Our practice, being diverse across such a variety of locations, and sectors requires a clear management strategy for analyzing our data for performance and decision making
- Conrad Gargett was an early adopter (nearly 10 years ago) of the Total Synergy software, having been challenged by an existing job costing software product which consistently offered poor and inaccurate reporting. I recall talking to the Board of Directors at that time, about the cost of the implementation of Synergy and noting their concerns on taking the financial investment. I also recall shortly after implementation, finding a number of old projects where invoicing had been missed completely, delivering an immediate 100% return on the investment!
- Most design firms with longevity such as ours, have had various periods of both staff growth and consolidation. We have however experienced significant and continuous growth during the past twenty years. At the time I joined the firm, we only had 30 staff on the payroll, however our numbers are now pushing 150 talented employees. Our growth has been enabled through strategic recruitment and the winning of significant projects. This organic growth being achieved as a recognized Employer of Choice with most recruitment coming via industry networks.
- Over the past 5 years, we have also grown through merging with national award winning firms, Riddel Architecture and Ancher Mortlock Woolley and a few months ago, we merged with Donaldson Worrad. Conrad Gargett is a robust team with a broad range of expertise and complementary experience
- Just to demonstrate the growth in numbers and I guess the point to note that as we grew, synergy remained an important data base tool to manage that growth and at no time did we feel synergy was not able to match the demand of that growth.
- The absorbing of the three design firms in the last 5 years, has provided opportunities and challenges in change management on many different levels. One of these challenges is to bring the new merged firms onto the one common financial platform, Synergy. Of the three firms, one firm used a competitor timesheet program, one used excel timesheets and the other used paper recording and a bit of reliance on their memory to send invoices.
- Consistent reporting across the business was necessary to monitor the success of the mergers, existing projects and provide data for future decision making.
- Previously, in order to provide financial performance data back to the Directors and Project Leaders, I would print a report (one page per project) with a summary of all the budget and profitability at a subproject level. This gave a good overview of project data and would be familiar to most in the audience. With up to 500 projects in active or proposal status, this was a ream of paper! If you place a ream of paper on someone’s desk, they are never that keen to review… it looked like ‘a lot of work’! Also the report only provided historical data on the project performance to date, and not for the current month only, nor any forecast data.. Forecast reports would be provided separately.
- With the growing complexity of the business, across multiple sectors, multiple locations and a growing number of reporting lines, we needed to go back to basics to provide timely, accurate, informative yet simplistic reporting. Breaking the data down to its simplest (but fullest form Simple – make it a one-liner for easy consumption Fullest – make sure it summarises all the data required Providing enough information in a form that is complete and easy for comparison Drill in to the source data as required, do not look at detailed source data unless required I designed a simple report using the power of the synergy database and a few tricks in excel
- Simply designed this excel report is a produced as a result of data being exported from the Synergy data base. RED – COLUMNS BLUE – COLUMNS YELLOW - COLUMNS GREY – COLUMN GREEN – COLUMN The key is that the project data is only contained on one line per project. Keeping it simple Attributes for Project Leader and Project Sector are captured on each line.
- The report is created using 5 different Synergy reports in order to extract all data required. The data is dumped into an excel template to generate the report. The report can also be run at sub project level to extract data when multiple sub project leaders are used within one project. This is important where you have different sub project managers feeding into one project. For example we have landscape architects and interior designers. This report can be designed / pulled out sub project level as required.
- Obviously given it is an excel report, the data can be easily manipulated using filters.. Filter by Project Leader Filter by Sector Pick up totals to dissect the data.
- Our leaders are able to quickly and efficiently identify key project data around profitability and forecasting. Clear visibility for office wide performance and forecasting, as well as dissecting for sectors, and individual project leaders Since introduction of the report, I have noticed an increased interest by the design professionals wanting to understand the performance of their projects. For a team of designers, this is a great outcome! Conrad Gargett has utilised the Synergy Software program for nearly 10 years, yet in this time, our business has experienced significant growth. The evolving of the business has led to changes in reporting lines and the intensity and complexity of the project data reporting requirements. Using the power of the data captured in the software program, Total Synergy has been able to grow and evolve with our business and provide simplistic and effective project management.