Featured Case Study
Sunrise Geo: from fragmented reporting to a true owner control system
Sunrise Geo moved from fragmented reporting to a true owner control system, reducing reporting time from about 100 hours per month to about 20.
Commercial impact
- Reporting time reduced from about 100 hours per month to about 20 hours per month
- Roughly 960 hours recovered annually from reporting effort
- KPI visibility enabled more strategic revenue growth planning
Challenge
The business problem was bigger than reporting
Sunrise Geo reflects a common owner-level AEC problem: the firm was growing, project activity was moving, and leadership needed better visibility into what the business was selling, delivering, and risking without spending enormous time rebuilding the picture by hand.
This was not a dashboard-only engagement. Sunrise built an operational control system that connected KPI visibility, reporting automation, owner review, and workflow structure so leadership could see the business earlier and manage growth more deliberately.
- Leadership reporting was fragmented across tools and depended on manual collection, interpretation, and reconciliation.
- Reporting work consumed about 100 hours per month, creating major drag on the business.
- Owners needed a stronger view into backlog, KPI movement, delivery pressure, and operational risk before issues became expensive.
- The firm needed better visibility without turning engineers into full-time reporting administrators.
What Sunrise actually built
- An owner-level KPI system that connected revenue, backlog, project status, and operational signals in one place
- Automated reporting workflows that reduced the monthly reporting burden dramatically
- Proposal-to-project visibility and leadership reporting structure for cleaner weekly review
- A more dependable operating cadence for surfacing issues, reviewing change, and planning growth
- Client-facing visibility improvements that supported a more controlled operating experience
How operations changed
- Leadership moved from reconstructed reporting to a consistent operating review rhythm.
- KPI visibility improved enough to support more strategic revenue growth planning instead of reactive guesswork.
- Reporting time dropped from about 100 hours per month to about 20, freeing roughly 80 hours monthly for higher-value work.
- The firm gained a system that scaled better because visibility no longer depended on a few people stitching updates together by hand.
Impact
Commercial and operational impact
The system did not just improve visibility. It materially reduced reporting drag, recovered capacity, and gave leadership clearer KPI visibility for planning the next stage of growth.
Reporting time reduced from about 100 hours per month to about 20 hours per month
Roughly 960 hours recovered annually from reporting effort
KPI visibility enabled more strategic revenue growth planning
Recovered capacity and earlier visibility improved commercial and operational control
Related Services
Services behind the case study
Owner Control Systems
Create a single executive operating system for revenue, backlog, margin, utilization, and operational risk.
Proposal-to-Project Systems
Connect pursuit visibility to project startup so owners can see how work enters the firm, converts, and impacts delivery capacity.
Operational Reporting
Replace delayed, fragmented reporting with a leadership-ready view of firm performance and emerging risk.
Related Insights
Use the ideas behind the implementation
Operational Risk
Why Disconnected Systems Create Owner Bottlenecks
When proposals, projects, reporting, and communication do not connect, owners become the system holding everything together.
Backlog Visibility
How AEC Firms Track Backlog
A practical look at backlog tracking for engineering firms and why simple totals often hide the real operating picture.
Executive Systems
Owner Control Systems for AEC Firms
Why growing AEC firms need more than dashboards and what an owner control system actually includes.
Ready To Apply This
Need the same level of executive visibility inside your firm?
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