Studio PCH is a 25-person Venice, California architecture and hospitality design firm. The Busywork Audit found a familiar growth problem: exceptional work was being delivered through expertise that lived in people rather than systems.
The $150–200K figure is an opportunity identified through the audit, not a claim of savings already realized.
What kept making the work harder
Projects repeatedly started from scratch. Knowledge was difficult to pass on, delegation could create another review cycle, and important decisions flowed through a small number of people. The issue was not talent. The firm needed a better way to capture and reuse what its people already knew.
Knowledge lived in people
Without shared documentation, hard-won project knowledge was difficult to find and reuse.
Delegation created rework
Managers spent time packaging, explaining, and reviewing work that should have moved more cleanly.
Growth hit key-person limits
Critical decisions bottlenecked through a few leaders, constraining capacity.
Finance stayed manual
Recurring finance activity consumed roughly twenty hours each week.
“We wanted to understand the key changes we could make to increase efficiency—both in how we work individually and how our staff operates as a team.” — Melinda Prisco, Director of Operations
Audit before automation
Clearworks interviewed stakeholders, mapped acquisition, delivery, and operations workflows, reviewed the technology and security environment, and modeled the value of each opportunity. The roadmap deliberately mixed lower-risk immediate moves with larger operating changes.
Do not automate an unclear workflow. First make the work visible, then decide what should be documented, redesigned, connected, or automated.
What changed first
The assessment created shared language. “SOP” entered the firm’s operating vocabulary. Melinda documented one recurring complex workflow and reported that the single change was already saving hours per month. Leadership also gained a clearer view of the tradeoff between incremental software spending and the time opportunity identified by the audit.
“Working with Clearworks has helped us not only identify but also clearly name some of our biggest challenges—and as the saying goes, ‘naming the problem is the first step toward solving it.’” — Melinda Prisco
What this means for another firm
If every project feels like reinvention, the constraint may be knowledge transfer rather than individual performance. A useful assessment makes that pattern concrete, sizes the opportunity, and gives leaders options they can sequence without overwhelming the team.
Find the part that keeps slowing people down.
Bring one piece of work that keeps coming back.