Field leaders know the drill: when it comes to making big project decisions, the process rarely feels as structured as it should. You’ve got stakeholders with competing priorities, back-and-forth emails, and yet another massive spreadsheet that someone forgets to update.
This was the exact pain point Skanska ran into while working on a high-profile Chemical Sciences building project. But instead of sticking with the usual spreadsheet chaos, they decided to build something better with Quickbase.
At Quickbase’s Empower 2025, the trio behind this transformation, Ryan Klein and Lisa Neil from Skanska, along with Quickbase builder Benjamin Buday, walked through how they replaced an overwhelming manual voting process with a streamlined automated app. And the best of all, they built it fast, with flexibility to scale and shift as needed.
Here’s how they pulled it off and why it worked.
The Challenge: Managing Decisions in a Swamp of Spreadsheets
Skanska was bidding on a university project where decision-making wasn’t straightforward. Multiple stakeholders—faculty, facilities teams, and project managers—needed visibility and input.
Hundreds of decisions had to be made, from which materials to use to how various structural components would be built. Each option needed to be evaluated against a set of criteria like cost, availability, and build time.
It wasn’t just a matter of collecting feedback. It was about collecting structured feedback that could be compared, documented, and acted on.
The process they were working with:
- A central spreadsheet
- Manually created scorecards
- Email follow ups
- Painfully slow aggregation
In short: it wasn’t scalable.
The Turning Point: Building a Custom Decision Management App
The existing process centered around messy spreadsheets and constant back and forth emails just wasn’t working for Skanska. What the team needed was a smart system that could streamline the process, track every moving part, and give everyone involved the clarity they needed without the headache.
So, they turned to Quickbase to build a custom app. To kick things off quickly, they used Smart Builder, Quickbase’s AI-powered tool, to easily set up the app’s basic structure. Think of it as a starting template that made sure everything was organized right from the get-go.
Once the initial structure was in place they were able to focus on the specifics of their decision-making process. Here’s how they approached it:
- Decision Topics: The first step was listing out every decision that had to be made throughout the project. For example, if they needed to choose between materials like concrete, steel, or wood, each material choice became a “decision topic.”
- Options: For every decision topic, there were several options to choose from. These options needed to be compared against clear criteria to make sure the best choice was made.
- Scoring Criteria: To evaluate each option, they set up scoring criteria like cost, availability, and build time. This ensured that every option could be measured against the same standards.
- Stakeholders: Each decision had multiple stakeholders, project managers, engineers, architects, and others. The app automatically assigned the relevant people to the right decisions based on their expertise.
- Scorecards: Once the stakeholders were assigned, the app created tailored scorecards for each one. These scorecards helped gather feedback in a consistent and structured way, ensuring everyone rated options based on the same criteria.
Smart Builder helped them get all these elements in place quickly, providing the app structure in a fraction of the time it would have taken to build it manually.
The Automation Layer: Making Pipelines Do the Heavy Lifting
Once Skanska had set up their custom decision management app using Smart Builder, the next challenge was to streamline the process and eliminate any manual work. That’s where Pipelines came in, Quickbase’s automation tool that allows you to create workflows with zero manual intervention. It works like a digital assistant, handling repetitive tasks and making processes more efficient and less prone to errors. For Skanska, Pipelines was key in automating much of the decision-making process, saving time and letting the team focus on higher-priority work.
Here’s how Pipelines helped:
- Automating Scorecard Creation: Whenever a new decision topic was added, Pipelines automatically generated the corresponding scorecards for stakeholders, along with all the necessary scoring records. No more manual updates, everything happened automatically in the background.
- Managing Late Additions: If a new stakeholder needed to be added mid-process, Pipelines took care of it. It automatically created all the links and records for the new person, making sure no one was left out, even as the process evolved.
- Compiling Results: Once the votes were in, Pipelines tallied the scores and highlighted the winning options without any manual aggregation. This eliminated the need for follow up emails and chasing down feedback.
By automating these tasks, Skanska saved time and reduced errors. For a single decision, this automation is a game-changer. But when you’re managing dozens, or even hundreds, of decisions, the time saved adds up quickly.
Why It Worked: Flexibility, Visibility, and Buy-In
The solution’s impact went beyond automation because it was easy to use and simple to evolve.
Every stakeholder had a clear view of what needed their input, and every decision lived in one place. No more hunting through emails or wrestling giant spreadsheets. Just clarity.
The biggest gains arrived in the final 20%. Automation handled the routine work: creating scorecards, sending reminders, and tallying votes, which freed people to focus on judgment and follow-up. What made the solution stand out was everything that happened after.
Teams could tweak scoring logic midstream, adjust criteria for specific decisions, and add new stakeholders on the fly without breaking the process. That level of flexibility is rare in traditional tools and kept momentum from stalling under admin work.
Turning Complexity into Clarity—The Skanska Way
Skanska’s story shows that operational complexity doesn’t have to lead to decision paralysis. With the right tools and a bit of creativity, even the most complicated stakeholder processes can be turned into smooth, automated workflows.
Best of all, it didn’t require a complete system overhaul. This wasn’t a six-month IT project; it was a quick, focused solution that started with one clear pain point and solved it efficiently.
Curious how it all came together?
Catch the full Skanska story in the Empower 2025 session on demand ›
