Stantec

The system now manages resource allocation for 450 people across multiple offices, disciplines, and roles , all from a single Morta hub with real-time data. Project managers update resource needs every Friday, specifying how many days per week they need each team member. Monday moderation meetings use the live data to rebalance allocations, identify overbooked or underutilised staff, and review skills alignment. Each team member sees their own workload automatically filtered by their user tag , which projects they’re assigned to, how many days per week, and any notes from their project managers.

Power BI dashboards provide colour-coded heat maps showing utilisation across the team: red for zero days, green for five, blue for overbooked. The visual makes capacity problems impossible to miss. By combining staff rates with weekly day allocations, the system calculates expected fee generation per project, per discipline, and per office. Fee burn-down schedules show forecast cost-to-complete for every project based on actual resource allocation data , real forecasting rather than guessing. A centralised leave tracker ensures teams don’t book holidays at the same time and gives resource planners visibility into upcoming capacity constraints.

The speed of delivery tells the story best: the entire system was built over two weekends and implemented for 450 people within two and a half weeks.

With projects changing daily , clients shifting demands, projects going on hold, new work starting , it was extremely challenging to know who was available and who was overcommitted at any given time. The information was scattered across multiple Excel files and separate databases that didn’t talk to each other, and it was stale by the time it was compiled.

Planning what the team would be doing in the next four weeks to six months required aggregating data from multiple sources. This wasn’t about winning new projects , it was about ensuring the right resources were allocated to deliver projects already in progress. Without a clear view of skills gaps and future demand, it was difficult to inform the HR team about what kind of expertise needed to be recruited and when. Resource shortfalls were discovered reactively rather than planned for proactively. And ensuring that the right people were on the right projects was especially challenging across multiple offices in different time zones.

Jan designed a centralised Morta hub with three interconnected tables at its core: a staff summary with everyone’s office, discipline, role, status, and billing rate; a project summary with codes, managers, statuses, and delivering disciplines; and a resource planning table where each row represents a person-project allocation with weekly day counts for the coming months. That resource planning table is where project managers input their needs and where all downstream reporting originates.

Using Morta’s dynamic tables filtered by user tags, each team member sees only their own workload , their projects, tasks, notes from PMs, and day allocations. PMs see all staff on their projects with the ability to adjust allocations. Separate management views group the same data by person, by project, or by unassigned demand not yet matched to specific people. Power BI dashboards refresh hourly, providing utilisation heat maps with colour coding, annual leave tracking, revenue forecasting based on staff rates and time allocation, and fee burn-down schedules per project. When you put together the numbers , how much individual people cost, how many days you expect them on a project , this gives you real forecasting rather than guessing.

Jan built the entire system over two weekends after getting approval at 5pm on a Friday evening. By the following Monday, the core hub structure was operational. From build completion to full deployment across 450 people took only two and a half weeks , teams were onboarded rapidly because the interface was intuitive and the workflow was straightforward.

The system was deliberately designed around project delivery rather than keeping people busy. Resource requests come from project needs, and the moderation process focuses on ensuring projects have the right resources. Project managers update their needs every Friday, looking as far ahead as they can see , typically four to six weeks. On Monday, resourcing groups review the aggregated data, identify conflicts, and moderate allocations through live discussion using the Morta views. Predefined views serve different audiences without requiring additional data entry: individual workloads for team members, project workloads for PMs, staff workloads for resourcing meetings, and unassigned work for capacity planning. Power BI dashboards refresh hourly, providing senior management with utilisation metrics, revenue forecasting, and fee burn-down schedules. As Jan puts it: keep it as simple as possible and then people use it.