City Diamond Contracting

15% growth in 12 months, with 35% fewer manual errors

City Diamond Contracting (CDC) is a design and build contractor headquartered in Dubai, delivering steel and concrete buildings across the UAE since 1983. The company has completed more than 1,000 projects, from industrial facilities and commercial fit-outs to education buildings and fuel stations, for clients including Emirates, ENOC, BMW and Amazon. Within 12 months of moving its group companies onto Archdesk, CDC recorded 15% growth and reduced human error in its processes by 35%.

Where CDC started

CDC runs several subsidiary companies, and by the time they came to Archdesk the group had outgrown its software. Each company kept its own set of tools, so no one could see the whole portfolio in one place, and the systems themselves were too old and too rigid to change. Specifically, the group was dealing with:

• Aging systems that could not keep pace with the group's growth
• A different set of management tools in each subsidiary
• Limited control over who could see and edit what
• Project and financial management split across disconnected systems

What the group needed

The brief was clear: one adaptable platform for every company in the group, with access rights that follow each person's role, project management strong enough for design and build work at CDC's scale, and proper budget control across the portfolio.

How the rollout worked

Archdesk configured a separate account for each subsidiary and connected them under one group structure. Group administrators manage every company and see all data from one place, while employee groups work inside their own company's account with the access their responsibilities require. Modules were shaped around each department's way of working, and Xero was connected so accounting stayed in step with operations.

What changed

One view of every project

Every project across every CDC company now lives in one system. Group management gained full portfolio control without taking anything away from the individual companies, which continue to run their own projects day to day.

Finance on a single record

Procurement, quotations, valuations and invoicing are tracked against the project they belong to, with the supporting documents attached. Nothing goes missing between systems anymore, and financial data is visible only to the people whose role calls for it.

Dashboards for budget control

Dashboards built for CDC surface planning, spend against budget and reporting the moment the data lands, replacing the slow manual pulls the old systems required. That speed is where much of the 35% reduction in human error came from: fewer re-keyed numbers, fewer copies of the truth.

Accounting connected

The Xero integration extended the same control to the accounting side, bringing one more part of the operation into a single central place.

Room to build

The management time the group recovered now goes where CDC wants it: winning and delivering landmark work across the UAE, including projects for Emirates and the Indian Pavilion at EXPO2020 Dubai.

Learn more about the company at citydiamondcontracting.com.