20 Locations
Architecture & Engineering
1400 staff
Using a design-centric platform that’s made for architects has been invaluable for all our design-side coordination needs.
Laura Babinski, Technology Strategist
SmithGroup is one of the world’s leading integrated design firms, with a heritage that spans over a century and a half of creating iconic spaces that define the built environment and enrich communities. Today, SmithGroup is an award-winning architecture and engineering company that employs research, data, advanced technologies, and design thinking to help clients solve their most complex challenges.
Laura Babinski, a Technology Strategist at SmithGroup, champions technology and change for SmithGroup’s 1,400 employees in 20 locations. With a background as an architect, Laura understands firsthand the challenges of designing and the need to stay organized, agile and secure.
Laura describes her job as being driven by change management, “Getting 1,400 people from one place to another takes a lot so we are careful with the technology changes we make to ensure that it’s worth it."
So, when the time came for SmithGroup to review their project management software, knowing that TonicDM was developed by a team of architects and engineers helped with the decision. “Most construction management platforms are contractor-centric,” Babinski says. “A contractor-centric platform does not provide any venue for us to handle our design-side coordination.”
For that coordination, SmithGroup uses TonicDM to help keep track of their Construction Administration (CA) workflows. For projects that span years, knowing where to find design decisions is critical, says Babinski. From a CA perspective being able to know where things are in the system: "When did we get this? When is it due back? Who has it? How long do we have to return it and what’s the answer? These things make day-to-day design management that much easier for our hybrid workforce.”
Working with TonicDM for the past four years has helped SmithGroup achieve their internal goals. “Because we are tracking RFIs in the CA module, it’s helping us define the ways we can be more efficient so that our team can focus on design,” says Babinski. “What’s interesting to me are the ways that we can get better analytics on our RFIs because we have the project volume. We have been working on ways to flag avoidable issues so that they are protective against future added costs. It’s great to feel that we can bring this to TonicDM and partner with them on a solution. We are building this together,” says Babinski.
