bdna exists to improve society
Every day their team harness technology to make a real-world impact on Australia's public safety, education and health.
But as the software consultancy grew from two co-founders to a firm of 100, co-founder and CTO Marty Wauchope watched the mountain of admin grew as well.
A much-needed internal upgrade
As bdna began planning to take their expertise - and impact - global, Marty and the team realised it was time to do for themselves what they do every day for their clients:
"I've seen over and over again what happens when you help an organization move from disconnected legacy systems to a single integrated system. The impact is massive - people are more focused, they love showing up for work more, they make better decisions."
It was time for bdna to upgrade their own project systems, so the whole team could spend less time stuck in project admin, and more on making an even bigger impact on the world.
Finding the right tool for the job
Karyn Smith, bdna’s Chief Operating Officer, had helped guide the team through an epic growth journey - now it was time to scale their project systems to fit.
“Prior to Projectworks, every project lived in a spreadsheet. That worked when bdna was six people sitting in the same room, but with 100 people it was like driving a car with a fogged-up windshield. We still got where we needed to go, but it took so much more time, focus and effort than it should have”
For Karyn, this wasn’t just about changing bdna’s systems – it was about transforming the way their people worked - everyone from CEO, to software engineers, to forensic scientists.
The Challenge
Karyn and the bdna team boiled it down to four non-negotiables - the stuff their future project software had to do better than spreadsheets.
- No more data doubt. While bdna’s leaders had always relied on deep expertise and instincts to make critical budget, resourcing, and forecasting decisions, they saw an opportunity to strengthen this with real-time, up-to-date data.
From Karyn’s perspective, this shift was essential: "Having accurate data further empowered us to act earlier and make even more confident, proactive decisions as we grew."
- No more manual handbrakes. "People across the business - from developers and delivery leads to HR and finance - were spending valuable time on manual processes," Karyn says. "Tracking time, managing budgets, pulling reports - it worked, but it wasn’t the best use of our expertise as we grew." Karyn wanted a tool that would streamline these tasks and free the team to focus on higher-impact work, especially as bdna continued to scale.
- More meaningful work. As Karyn puts it "none of us came here to do admin for a living". bdna's mission is a massive draw-card - and retention magnet for every single one of the 100 mission-driven humans who work there. This software needed to automate the boring stuff, freeing them up to get back to the big stuff.
- Ready to scale - bdna didn’t just need a tool that would fit the business today - it needed something that would match the pace of their ambitious growth targets - and global ambitions.
After growing over 100% in one year, Karyn knew scalability was critical - "The biggest risk was picking a tool, migrating 100 people and hundreds of projects across, then have to do it all again a year later when we outgrew it"
From project complexity to clarity
Once the bdna team were confident Projectworks ticked their four boxes, the team applied the same agile principles to the implementation they use with clients - deliver fast and adapt frequently.
For Eugene Brink, bdna's Chief Delivery Officer, the first - and most critical win - was getting their team of 100 logging their time on Projectworks. According to Eugene "Timesheets were the foundation that unlocked even deeper insights. With that data, we could take our resourcing, forecasting, and reporting to the next level."
A new organizational compass
Once bdna's timesheet data was flowing, Karyn and her team rolled out the other features, and within months Projectworks was bdna’s single source of truth for every one of their project budgets, expenses, resourcing, forecasting and reporting.
For a company so dedicated to outcomes, the pay-off of has been significant:
1. Longer horizons unlock leadership - "Suddenly we could see our resourcing three months ahead instead of three weeks," says Marty. That longer-term view has meant project managers can spot challenges before they escalate, make more confident data-informed decisions, and work with their teams to stay on budget, scope or timeline.
2. Project ownership, not just management - "Projectworks really has changed the behaviour of our project managers," notes Karyn. "They're more accountable now for their projects. They have more visibility and ownership, and can know at any moment how resources and budgets are being managed"
3. Future-proofed decision making - Forecasting has shifted from instinct-led, to a much more strategic conversation about the future of bdna. For Eugene that's been a game changer- "Now that we can forecast more accurately, we're able to see where we're going to be 12, 18, 24 months from now, and see where we might need more people, or more projects."
A safe place for sensitive projects
For bdna, data sovereignty and security isn't just a box ticking exercise. Their customers deal with some of society's most sensitive data - patient information, crime scene evidence, police records - and bdna has to ensure its customer records are equally secure.
Every part of their tech stack has to safeguard potentially sensitive data, and meet the Australian goverment's stringent data sovereignty requirements, including Projectworks.
"Data sovereignty isn't a thing a consulting firm has to think about - until you start doing goverment work," says Karyn, "I'm surprised how few organizations understood our needs on this stuff, especially the bigger US-based tech companies. It was such a relief to find a company like Projectworks who took data sovereignty as seriously as we do."
The ripple effect of Projectworks
For mission-focused software firms like bdna, it's never just about maximising billable efficiency. By cutting admin friction and giving everyone access to real-time data, Projectworks has unlocked more time and energy for bdna's mission - improving society
The ripple effects are real:
- Scalable project systems shaping bdna's next chapter of global growth.
- More confident project managers and healthier projects.
- Mission-motivated consultants focused on meaningful work, rather than wrangling spreadsheets.
