How Thomas & Hutton used OpenAsset Shred to craft proposals in hours – not days
Apr 30, 2026
Based in the southeast US, Thomas & Hutton is an engineering and design firm that has been shaping communities since 1946. Operating across six states with services spanning civil engineering, transportation, water resources, landscape architecture, and more, they believe that projects are more than just job numbers — they are places, communities, foundations, and legacies.
Driven by a passion to build healthier, more vibrant communities, Thomas & Hutton combines deep technical expertise with a genuine commitment to the clients and communities they serve.
The challenge
With 80+ years of project history and over 100 submittals per year, Thomas & Hutton had built a remarkable depth of experience. The challenge wasn’t a lack of content: It was quickly pinpointing the most relevant examples, resumes, and past write-ups for each pursuit.
Three things held the team back. First, the sheer volume of institutional knowledge made it impossible to remember where everything lived. Second, with multiple offices and contributors, proposal materials naturally spread across different places, making it difficult for distributed team members to access the right resources. Third, while the team’s expertise was best applied to strategy and storytelling, team members often spend hours tracking down content that already existed. This ate up valuable time that could’ve been spend strengthening a final submission.
“I submitted over 100 projects last year – I don’t remember where to go look for that.”
– Maggie Cofer, Marketing & Pursuits Manager at Thomas & Hutton
The solution
When Thomas & Hutton Marketing & Pursuits Manager, Maggie Cofer, first logged into OpenAsset Shred, she went in blind: no training, practice, or expectations. This wasn’t a problem, however, because she found the platform intuitive and easy to navigate. Maggie put it to work immediately on a live submittal with a 3-day turnaround.
Using Thomas & Hutton’s full proposal library — a substantial collection of 130+ proposals — the platform intelligently surfaced relevant project examples, resumes, and past write-ups. Since Shred draws exclusively from the firm’s own uploaded proposals (rather than the open internet), this meant Maggie was able to get accurate, source-traceable content within a fraction of the time it would normally take.
“I don’t have to worry about where it came from. It came from my sources.”
– Maggie Cofer, Marketing & Pursuits Manager at Thomas & Hutton
Key results
The time savings were immediate and significant. Maggie reports that 80% of her proposal research was completed within 50 minutes — a task that used to take a full week.
And the impact extended beyond Maggie’s own productivity. After two hours with the platform, she stood up in front of her entire marketing department and trained them on the spot. The story has since become one she shares on multiple calls with other firms considering the platform.
“I became a two-hour expert — and then I taught three other people how to use it. I think that speaks volumes for your software.” — Maggie Cofer, Marketing & Pursuits Manager at Thomas & Hutton
The speed of gathering content freed the team to focus on what they do best: strategy and storytelling. With OpenAsset Shred, the whole team now works from a single source of truth:
- Everyone accesses the same information in real time from the same dashboard.
- No more uncertainty about whether content was saved on a personal hard drive.
- Organic, peer-led adoption with no lengthy onboarding required.
- Intelligent, AI-driven content sourcing and analysis means team members no longer have to spend hours digging through old proposals — giving them time to focus on strategy.
- New proposals can be conquered within minutes rather than days.
