Furtado & Associates Improves Project Management with Deltek Ajera

Furtado & Associates, Inc. is a consulting services firm located in Seattle, Washington. They are a certified Minority Owned Business Enterprise (MBE) and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE). The firm provides civil engineering, land surveying, right-of-way engineering and construction management services. They recently implemented Deltek Ajera to help manage their project workflow.

Focused on building America’s infrastructure for the past 40 years, the firm’s projects impact people's daily lives, with 95% of their work taking place in the public sector. When Joshua Cheatham, President of Furtado & Associates, bought the company in March 2022, he knew that for the company to grow, they needed to upgrade their technology and project management processes. “We were using a combination of QuickBooks Online and Excel spreadsheets, it was a very manual process,” said Joshua.

Streamlined Timesheet Entry Improves Project Management

Prior to using Ajera, employees completed their timesheets in Excel. Then the human resources manager would manually import each timesheet into a master spreadsheet and perform calculations for project managers and the finance team. Project managers (PMs) were provided updates, including overhead costs, at weekly status meetings.

This time-consuming process caused a few projects to go over budget because the firm lacked real-time data on project costs. “When you have small projects around $25,000, paying workers an extra day or two can cause you to run over budget. We needed a quicker way to figure out what we were spending on the project,” said Joshua.

With multiple projects underway at any given time, it’s important to track critical data in a timely manner. “Imagine if people worked all week and you didn't know where your budget was. That was what our system was like. Then during our weekly project status meetings, we would find out that a project was over budget,” said Joshua.

Now with Deltek Ajera, employees quickly complete their timesheets, providing project managers with timely data on actual time spent on projects. Because the data is delivered in real-time, PMs can be proactive and identify and correct issues before going over budget.

Monitoring Financial Health

The firm was using QuickBooks Online and Excel spreadsheets to manage their corporate finances. But the delayed timesheet entry caused delays in processing client invoices. Now that employees are completing their timesheets in Ajera, the financial team has instant visibility into how time is being charged so that they can create and process invoices faster to improve cash flow.

“I am always looking at the account receivables dashboard just to see which invoices are outstanding,” shared Joshua. “I can also drill down into the details quickly. It’s probably my favorite feature.”

Taking Ajera to the Next Level

As the firm prepares for continued growth, they plan to expand their use of Ajera, starting with project scheduling and resource management. “I used similar functionality from another Deltek product with a previous employer,” said Joshua. “Using a technology solution made it easy to see how many hours were assigned to each person. We were able to make changes quickly if we saw that one person was assigned 80 hours of work one week while another was assigned only 10. This allowed us to utilize our resources better and avoid employee burnout.”

Furtado & Associates went live with Deltek Ajera in December 2022 and look forward to incorporating additional functionality into their project workflow in the near future.