In 2017, LIVIC Civil created a company to focus on work that sparked their passion for guiding clients and delivering high-quality civil engineering projects. They grew quickly from three to more than 20 employees, and the growth was accompanied by an increase in internal meetings that were taking away from time their team could spend on revenue-generating client work.
“We had two problems,” said Jesse Smith, Director of Transportation and Infrastructure at LIVIC Civil. “Our meetings were being managed over email. It was difficult to keep track of the attachments, agendas and minutes, which meant people were not prepared for meetings and we were writing the agenda as we went through it.”
Smith began looking for a solution to improve preparation and record-keeping. A Google search led him to Decisions and then to the Decisions for Microsoft Teams add-in. “We have used Office 365 since the start of the company in 2017,” said Smith. “I liked that Decisions is integrated into those tools already familiar to our team.”
Drew Barton, P.E., Principal and Co-Founder, shared, “With Decisions, everyone adds their notes and pre-populates the agenda with their comments, so we can dive right into discussions.”
“There is a common sentiment across the company that Decisions makes it easy to organize, find and share materials around our meetings,” continued Smith. “The automated elements like agenda notification and having everything stored in one place lets us spend the time before, during and after meetings most productively.”
Barton’s favorite feature is the built-in time tracker. “I love that it keeps time by topic and not just at the overall meeting-level. Meetings are time-consuming but important. They are where our managers engage with each other and how the different business sectors share work. It is imperative that we use our time together as efficiently as possible." He continued, "Decisions guides us through our meetings just like we guide our clients through the challenges and complexities of each project.”
Since the implementation of Decisions, Smith and Barton estimate the company reallocates thousands of dollars back to billable time each month across employees.
“Our business is engineering and we are selling hours,” said Barton. “When we can keep our meetings short and to the point, we get the most benefit from them and more time to focus on guiding our clients through projects.”