DVVD, architects, engineers, and OOTI.

Interview: DVVD, architects, engineers, and OOTI.

The roof of the Philippe Chatrier court at Roland Garros, it's them. The renovation of the POPB, now Accor Arena, it's them too. Their management solution, on the other hand, is us.

Céline Cerisier, Financial and Administrative Director explains to us why and how she left Excel in order to entrust the monitoring of planning and invoicing to OOTI.

Hello Celine! You are associated with the head of the DVVD Architects & Engineers agency. So, agency or design office?

Both !

A l’origine, c’est un bureau d’études ingénierie, structure et économie de la construction créé en 2005 par Daniel Vaniche et Vincent Dominguez. Les premiers temps, les projets architecturaux, étaient portés par une petite agence adossée à la structure.

But with the development of the activity, the projects have grown. When we picked up the renovation of the Accor Arena, formerly POPB, and the installation of the mobile roof of Roland Garros, it was necessary to further structure this subsidiary.

This is how the sister company, dedicated to architecture, was born. Today, we are 7 partners and 50 collaborators.

Although these are 2 separate entities, their activities are closely linked: 80% of our projects are shared by the architecture and engineering teams.

If you added the fluid and acoustic skills you would cover the entire project management!

Yes, but no, we have enough work as it is! (Laughs)

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In this ecosystem, what role do you play?

I am the Financial and Administrative Director. To summarize: I take care of everything that is not directly related to engineering and architecture.

Which should leave you with a few things to do…

Yes, I'm not bored. I manage HR, accounting, IT, stewardship, and often take on the role of team mom!

And you needed to simplify your life!

Our invoicing processes could be improved and very time-consuming. It must be said that the specificity of our organization does not make my life any easier: the architectural and engineering services are not billed in the same way, nor according to the same timing.
When you add to this the different specialities, the requirements of project owners who ask for fee schedules by division and the subtleties between public and private, you arrive at a real daily headache!

Until recently, I centralized all activity on Excel, with all that entails as a risk of errors and mishandling. Did I enter the correct invoice number? Is the right table in the right folder?

It was time for me to team up!

And there you discover OOTI.

Yes, finally I rediscovered since I had already looked into the subject.

After a time of reflection and discussions with the teams, I took the plunge and we integrated the 70 or so projects in progress. For a while, I split my work: I kept the usual process and I also reproduced it on OOTI. Fear of change, desire not to make mistakes, lack of confidence in the platform... It's not easy to change your habits, even when they're bad!

💡 The conclusion is clear: I save a lot of time! So much so that I now centralize everything on OOTI.
In a few clicks I have what took me much more time until then.

Billing first, then what?

In the future, I will extend access to all associates. My wish is clearly to convert all teams to OOTI.
This will allow us to better monitor the progress and billing schedule of our projects.

In short, for 2023, we still want beautiful projects, the end of all these repeated crises and continue the integration of OOTI into our work processes!

Thank you Celine!
‍The OOTI team warmly thanks Céline Cerisier for this very interesting interview about management within an engineering and architecture agency! We are very happy and proud to work daily with an agency like DVVD.