Fluor’s Mission Solutions Group Transforms Operations and Improves Workflow

Fluor Corporation, headquartered in Irving, Texas, helps provide professional and technical solutions that deliver safe, well-executed, capital-efficient projects to clients worldwide. With over 40,000 employees, Fluor has provided engineering, procurement and construction services for over 110 years. Fluor’s Mission Solutions Business Group focuses on serving the company’s federal government customers.

Fluor’s Mission Solutions Group was an SAP customer for nearly 30 years when it recognized its legacy solution could no longer keep pace with its government-focused Enterprise Resource Planning needs. “We knew we wanted to switch to Deltek’s Costpoint in 2021 and started working on obtaining corporate approval,” explained Katy Burnau, Vice President, Mission Support. “Operating as a government contractor within a commercial business can be challenging from an administrative perspective given the enhanced control requirements. We introduced Costpoint on a few of our projects, allowing us to do a side-by-side comparison of SAP and Costpoint, and Costpoint was clearly the superior option for our needs in the government space.”

Mission Solutions examined what Costpoint would bring to the business and knew the strategic decision would enable them to centralize and streamline their projects, people and financial management to enhance their offering to their federal government customers. “The potential benefits were very clear: long-term cost savings, a system that meets government contracting requirements, the ability to process incurred and indirect rates, compliance with government security requirements, out-of-the-box DCAA reporting, and much more,” Katy shared.

With the decision to move forward with Deltek, implementation efforts began in March 2022 and went smoothly. “It was seamless working with the Deltek team,” Katy said. “Deltek Professional Services were responsive, and knowledgeable. It was just a great experience.” In fact, Mission Solutions completed the implementation sooner than anticipated. “In support of our conversion to Costpoint, we tracked 115 areas of functional criteria, closed 6,000 subcontracts and purchase orders, revised 60 policies/practices, created 248 human resources organizational units, built 2,326 detailed job titles, 2,326 functional job titles and 89 personnel action codes, created 66 cost pools, and trained and migrated 1,926 employees into the new instance of Costpoint.”

A smooth implementation also meant significant cost savings. “By accomplishing the conversion in just 10 months, we saved $6 million from the original $12-million, 14-month estimate. No one in our company had ever even attempted anything close to this before.  For us to complete the implementation ahead of schedule was a testament to Deltek’s product, support, and communication, and our team’s commitment to getting it done.” 

Getting A Global Team Acclimated

In December 2022 with implementation complete, the next step was acclimation to the new system. “We moved 1,926 employees from SAP. Each of those employees completed training on how to submit timesheets, expense authorizations, and expense reports in Costpoint,” Katy explained. “In addition to updating the employee interfaces, we transitioned all business systems from SAP to Costpoint. We also established the appropriate interface solutions to feed information to corporate functions for employee benefit management. Every aspect of our business was impacted but the product is so easy to use that it really was seamless.”

By the time Mission Solutions implemented Costpoint as their ERP, they were also leveraging other Deltek products for a complete project lifecycle solution, including GovWin IQ, which provided them with a competitive advantage by accessing comprehensive market intelligence to provide insight and analysis to their sales team. Mission Solutions also uses Deltek’s Project Portfolio Management’s (PPM) suite of tools. “The PPM suite of applications has allowed us to bring together the independent variables of time, cost, resources, and human behavior to drive our enterprise forward,” Fred Pearson, Director, Project Controls, said.

Cost Savings and Greater Efficiencies

Armed with a complete project lifecycle solution with Costpoint at the forefront, Mission Solutions has already seen many of the benefits they hoped for. “We expect to realize $1 million annual cost savings through the elimination of redundancies in the first year. From an indirect rate management perspective alone, the difference is significant. With Costpoint, rate adjustments are nearly immediate, whereas, in the past, it took months to calculate and confirm our rates via SAP and external tools. Costpoint has proven to be the best fit for our strategic business needs.”

Another key improvement with Costpoint has been Mission Solutions ability to manage audits. “We’re very happy with the improvements we’ve seen in our audit processes using Costpoint,” Katy said. “In today's day and age, you cannot overstate the importance of rigorous compliance and cybersecurity, and Deltek gives us the confidence that we need to conduct our business. Ensuring that we are NIST 800 compliant enables the continuation of our business, which is critical to our ability to bid on and win government contracts.”

A Partner in Success

The relationship with Deltek has been a significant contributing factor to Mission Solutions’ success. “The support from Deltek has lived up to the expectations and has been excellent throughout the entire process,” Katy said. “It’s really made a difference for us. We’ve built trust and strong relationships with the support teams at Deltek, and we talk to real people from the company - that's been critical.”

“By transitioning the Mission Solutions Business Group to Deltek Costpoint, we created an ERP solution that is both scalable and intuitive. It’s configurable to meet our business needs and has improved our overall workflow from beginning to end,” Katy said. “As for the future, we have a great partnership with Deltek, and we look forward to growing that partnership.”