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Success Story: Thomas & Hutton Gains Client Loyalty and Competitive Advantage with Latapult (formerly geothinQ)

Thomas & Hutton is an industry leading civil engineering company that has provided engineering and consulting services to both public and private clients throughout the southeastern United States since 1946. Thomas & Hutton designs facilities that ultimately form the essential framework of healthy and thriving communities. A multi-disciplinary firm, Thomas & Hutton continues to learn, improve, design, and implement processes and practices that grow healthy, award-winning communities.

This drive to learn and constant process improvement led Thomas & Hutton to realize that its approach to mapping and project management were inefficient and outdated.

Time Is Value

In 2008, the civil engineering team at Latapult noticed that they were spending time inefficiently. Clients were calling with specific, land data-oriented questions, and then those clients had to wait while their project manager researched the answer and got back to them. Similarly, the Thomas & Hutton team was spending extensive amounts of time researching and creating custom maps. With the power of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) software and property data analysis, they knew there had to be a better way.

Early Adopters of On-Demand Land Mapping

Thomas & Hutton adopted Latapult so that its whole team could access information with ease and create richer maps of data using GIS mapping technology. Simple zoning map or parcel data research previously could take 30+ minutes – an inefficient use of the team’s time and the client’s budget. Latapult allowed Thomas & Hutton to get instant answers, giving project managers the opportunity for immediate responses to clients.

“Staying ahead of schedule and exceeding client expectations is what keeps me up at night,” said Brian Riley, project manager at Thomas & Hutton.

Latapult helped us cut down on both internal and external back and forth which has saved us hours of research work, allowing us to improve scheduling, budgeting and overall project management. Because everything is in one place, our team has become much more agile, and we are able to better anticipate and meet client needs.

Smarter Civil Engineering Wins Business

The Thomas & Hutton team reports using Latapult multiple times each and every day for both simple parcel data inquiries and complex land data analysis. The insights provided via Latapult propel Thomas & Hutton’s project managers to be true partners and consultants to their clients – allowing them to accurately see how land and property can best be developed and what challenges they might face without wasting tons of time or money. The team can also quickly look at a piece of land to determine what other projects Thomas & Hutton has worked on nearby, allowing them to quickly bring on the appropriate internal resources and expertise to support clients. Local and environmental data such as FEMA flood maps, county maps, plat maps, property data including value and boundaries, zoning and land use data, topography, street and transportation data, and aerial view gives Thomas & Hutton’s staff an inclusive look at external factors effecting project outcomes.

Being able to access and visualize land data on-demand GIS mapping gives Thomas & Hutton an advantage in business development. By helping potential clients make smart land acquisition decisions – in as little as 10 minutes – Thomas & Hutton proves its value from the start, helping the firm win projects and maintain long-term client relationships.

The Uses Are Endless

The Thomas & Hutton team has since used Latapult to accelerate several projects, such as:

  • Identifying parcels with appropriately-sized water lines for a hotel developer – quickly weeding out any land with 6-inch water lines.
  • Determining soil types for a residential developer so they would know which lots needed new soils.
  • Reorienting a patio for a resort developer by being able to show exactly what the view would be.
  • Creating an “environmental scorecard” for a development to identify where sensitive species lived.

“Because it’s so easy to get answers, Latapult empowers us to ask more questions,” said Mike Hughes, PE, senior project manager at Thomas & Hutton, “and by asking more questions, we – and our clients – are able to make smarter, more profitable, faster decisions.”

Latapult is a pioneer of an on-demand geographic land mapping and data visualization platform that is accelerating smart, data-driven decisions about valuable land like never before. To see how Latapult can enhance your civil engineering firm’s approach, start here.