The challenge
Meridian Rowe runs 10 active projects across five sectors with a six-person studio, and none of it lived in one place. Billable hours were logged inconsistently across timesheets, fee usage against contracted value only got checked when a project was already over, and resourcing for the next few weeks was whatever the principals could remember off the top of their heads. Submittals, RFIs, invoices, and change orders moved through email, where they were easy to lose track of.
The proposal pipeline lived in a separate spreadsheet nobody kept reliably updated, so win rate and upcoming workload were both guesses.
The approach
We built one studio operating system: a personal daily view for each team member, a project portfolio tracking phase and fee usage against contracted value, a six-week resourcing view across the whole studio, the proposal pipeline from submitted to won, and a single approvals inbox for everything that used to move through email.
- Personal daily dashboard: hours logged, milestones due, approvals awaiting, active projects
- Project portfolio tracking phase, next milestone, and fee usage against contracted value
- Six-week studio resourcing view showing who's on what, so over-allocation gets caught before it happens
- Proposal pipeline tracked from submitted through shortlisted to won, with win rate visible
- One approvals inbox for submittals, RFIs, invoices, change orders, and timesheets
The result
Studio leadership can see utilization, fee health across every project, and the full proposal pipeline in one place instead of stitching together spreadsheets and email threads. Approvals move through one inbox instead of getting lost, and resourcing conflicts get caught six weeks out instead of the week they happen.