How Rico streamlined report drafting across the whole TSC team
Find out how The Surveying company uses Rico to streamline their report drafting and ease their review.
Summary- TSC results with Rico at a glance
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About TSC
The Surveying Company (TSC) is a Hawke's Bay based practice with offices in Hastings, Waipukurau and Dannevirke. Its planning team works across Napier, Hastings, Central Hawke's Bay, Tararua and Wairoa, with subdivision making up the bulk of the work.
Challenges Before Rico
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Mechanical work absorbing a significant share of the drafting (browsing GIS and Plans, formatting, copy pasting…)
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Variable consistency across the team's reports
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Application completeness resting on the drafter project-to-project rather than a repeatable process
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Significant time spent on the review phase
Faster, more focused report drafting
Helen O'Shaughnessy, Senior Planner, is one of TSC’s primary report drafters and template owners.
Since adopting Rico, she has seen a clear reduction in the time it takes to complete a report.
The bigger shift is in the type of work being done. Mechanical, repetitive drafting used to eat up much of the total assessment.
For Helen, the change isn't just about speed. The report itself reads differently:
"I think the report drafting is overall more professional and follows a more logical sequence of introducing the proposal, explaining it and then assessing it.
The Rico template seems to eliminate a lot of detail we may have been previously including in AEEs, and the result is a more focused and consistent application."
Helen O'Shaughnessy
Senior Planner
Three things stand out:
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Reports come out more professional
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Clear structure: introduce, explain, assess
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Unnecessary detail is stripped out, leaving a more focused and consistent application
Confidence in the process
The review phase on the drafter's side has been cut roughly in half.
Behind that figure is something harder to measure: confidence.
"Essentially the format of the template [brings] the assurance/confidence that if you follow the process the application will include all relevant information to enable it to be processed.
Also contributing the increased confidence is the knowledge that the default template is well worded and easy to navigate with great planning knowledge and language. Not having to reinvent the wheel and revisit national policies/standards/rules is a huge step forward."
Helen O'Shaughnessy
Senior Planner
Following the process assures the application will contain what it needs to.
The default template does the heavy lifting on points to address and repeated wording, so she can focus on the key points and structure.
Better template management experience
As the person in charge of templates and process, Helen is well placed to judge how Rico compares to the way things were done before (Word + Ad-Hoc).
"Once I understood how the process worked, no comparison to be honest. The Rico system is user friendly and logical. Took me a few minutes to realise the brilliance of the system is its simplicity. I'm particularly enjoying the numbering/paragraph functions and the resulting 'non-fussy' and straight forward presentation of the template and the ease of populating it."
Helen O'Shaughnessy
Senior Planner
A few things stand out:
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Simplicity as a design principle
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Automatically numbering paragraphs and advanced styling setting that TSC like to apply to their reports to keep the presentation clean
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Templates that are easy to populate and easy to navigate
Visibility has also grown across the business now that management have access to the applications on their own project boards:
"I think this has increased now that management have access to the applications on their own project boards. A really useful and seamless way to share the documents and comment on the content."
Helen O'Shaughnessy
Senior Planner
Sharing and commenting on documents is effectively frictionless, and that has fed back into more consistent template use.
A quicker, easier review for the directors
Brian Daly, Director at TSC, reviews reports across the team. Two things have shifted for him with Rico.
He has seen his review time per report come down.
Alongside that, he rates reports as easier to review than before.
For newer team members, Brian sees another benefit:
"It cuts down on the compilation process of what needs to be addressed. Good for beginners."
Brian Daly
Director
Less experienced staff spend less time working out what an application needs to cover, because the template already frames it for them.
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Business impact
Brian sums up the change:
"Automation is an improvement, quality also. We will be better positioned to cope [with future spikes in workload]."
Brian Daly
Director
TSC came to Rico looking for consistency and reassurance that nothing was being missed but what they've built with it also positions the team to absorb more work when the pipeline picks up, without drafting turning into a bottleneck.
