Construction
6 months
Product Lab
Strategy
Prototyping
Design
Development
React Native
TypeScript
Sharepoint
Material UI
They are a well-known leader in the commercial construction industry providing general contracting, construction management, and design-build services for clients big and small. One of their most impressive differentiators is their aptitude for innovation with the application of virtual design and other emerging technologies in the construction space.
JE Dunn's proprietary product suite which leverages extensive historical project data, complex engineering calculations, and building modeling information is the engine for how they do business today.
As many in the industry know, the most critical phase of any project is the pre-construction process when teams are working to determine the design, budget, and scope of the project. To find the best possible use of resources available — and avoid costly re-work — it’s imperative that there is a high degree of collaboration between the contractor, client, and architect.
To facilitate a more collaborative pre-construction estimation process and help mitigate the risk of having to change project designs further down the road, JE Dunn created Align. The first iteration of this piece of technology provided stunning accuracy to project estimation, with around only a 1% margin of error. Yet, the tool remained widely underutilized by JE Dunn employees due to complicated workflows and overwhelming interfaces.
Estimates are built each year at JE Dunn
Margin of error for estimates built within the tool
Of JE Dunn estimators have never used the tool
When JE Dunn approached Crema, they were looking for a partner to help them redesign and build an improved Align tool that would be easily understood by internal and external users alike. While it was functional, it wasn’t easily usable, as it required a significant amount of institutional knowledge to utilize and overwhelmed new users with a crowded UI.
The tool had great potential to differentiate JE Dunn from the competition by providing a superior pre-con experience helping them win more business, but it needed a serious renovation.
Crema and JE Dunn set out to completely re-imagine Align, not only to create an improved user experience, but to facilitate an estimation process that would enable estimators to find “ingenious ways” to save costs without sacrificing the goals of the project.
Create a design system for Align and future digital products
Simplify the user experience without sunsetting critical features
Leverage existing back-end capabilities and develop a front-end experience for web
Test and validate the product in accordance with component-based acceptance criteria and accessibility expectations
After 24 weeks of workshopping, user research, prototyping, designing, developing, and testing, the new and improved tool was ready to be rolled out to JE Dunn’s 130 pre-construction estimators.
