Summit
Designing the future of construction
Role: Lead Product Designer
Location: Jacksonville, FL
Duration: 1 year (2021-2022)
Summit Contracting Group is the largest multifamily general contractor in the U.S., yet much of its work still relied on paper processes and outdated systems. I led research and design for a unified management platform, focusing on Preconstruction—the department responsible for subcontractor bidding and early project setup.
The challenge
Construction is among the least digitized industries, costing over $1.6 trillion annually in lost productivity (McKinsey).
At Summit, challenges included:
Siloed and outdated systems -- data scattered across disconnected tools.
Low transparency -- difficulty keeping documents current and accessible.
Communication gaps -- conflicting information across departments and no single record of client interactions.
Research
As the sole designer, I managed the full research cycle: interviews, site visits, competitor analysis, and synthesis.
Approach:
Interviews with Preconstruction, Project Management, and Administration teams.
Field visits to job sites and project meetings.
Competitor and tool audits to benchmark best practices.
Built a lean research repository in Notion for quick insights.
Key insights:
Document version control was unreliable.
Processes required juggling multiple, disconnected tools.
Standards and best practices were inconsistent across teams.
Defining the problem
I translated research into structured artifacts to guide design:
Process mapping -- visualized Preconstruction workflows end-to-end.
User workflows -- detailed what each role needed to accomplish.
Information architecture -- mapped how employees perceived the system.
Design specifications -- created tech-ready specs for UI components.
1. Process mapping
Using the knowledge gained in discovery, I created visual representations of the procedures followed by employees in Preconstruction, Project Administration, and Project Management. For the sake of simplicity, this case study focuses on the Preconstruction process.
The Preconstruction department is responsible for initiating the build, getting subcontractors to bid on work, determining the project's scope of work, communicating with subcontractors, and creating the contracts needed to get everyone working. This diagram lays out these tasks from start to finish.
User workflows
The next step involved determining what each user did during the processes shown above. This was completed for every type of major task in the company, but we'll be focusing on the areas within Preconstruction: construction drawings and the bidding process.
Information architecture
I mapped the various areas of the company and translated them to a logical architecture that reflected how employees perceived them.
Design specifications
The final step was to define design specifications that could be directly translated into UI elements. I relied on these specs heavily during the following design process.
Design
I moved from whiteboarding to low-fidelity wireframes in Miro, then to interactive prototypes in Figma.
Drawing management
Upload, view, and version control of construction documents.
Key features:
Centralized navigation & dashboard
A single hub for projects and tasks.
Drawing management
Upload, view, and version control of construction documents.
Bid package creation
Simplified workflows for assembling and distributing bid requests.
Design system:
Customized Polaris UI kit into a lightweight system.
Defined branding, typography, color, and iconography guidelines for consistency.
Outcomes
The redesigned Preconstruction platform:
Reduced reliance on paper and disconnected tools.
Improved transparency through version-controlled document sharing.
Established a shared, consistent design system to scale across departments.
Reflection
This project reinforced the value of deep contextual research in industries slow to adopt technology. By focusing on user pain points and mapping workflows clearly, I delivered a platform design that aligned with both Summit’s business needs and employee realities.
References
Agarwal, R., Chandrasekaran, S., & Sridhar, M. (2020, October 20). Imagining construction's digital future. McKinsey & Company. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/imagining-constructions-digital-future
Barbosa, F., Woetzel, J., Mischke, J., Ribeirinho, M. J., Sridhar, M., Parsons, M., Bertram, N., & Brown, S. (2020, October 20). Reinventing construction through a Productivity Revolution. McKinsey & Company. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/reinventing-construction-through-a-productivity-revolution
