How Design Collective supercharged proposals with Shred.ai
Nov 18, 2025
The AEC workflow challenge:
At Design Collective, a nationally recognized architecture and design firm with offices in Baltimore and Chicago, proposals are the heart of new business. But for a lean marketing team—Head of Marketing and Business Development Will Jovel and Marketing Manager Vanessa Zawodny—responding to RFPs had become a daily grind of repetitive tasks and information hunting.
“We’d spend hours pulling together outlines, digging for resumes, or trying to remember which project narrative we used last time. By the time we were ready to compile information and resources, the deadline was already looming.”
—Vanessa Zawodny, Marketing Manager
Will agreed, describing the frustration of knowing content existed somewhere but not being able to locate it quickly.
“You know you’ve written something before, but finding it again could take forever. It’s maddening when you realize you’ve rewritten content that already existed.”
—Will Jovel, Head of Marketing and Business Development
With most proposal information scattered between Deltek VantagePoint, shared drives, and OpenAsset, the team often felt like they duplicated work or missed opportunities to draw upon or reuse valuable content that already existed. They needed a smarter, faster way to manage proposal data—and reclaim time for the creative, more focused content that wins clients.
The Shred.ai proposal solution:
Design Collective turned to Shred.ai, the AI-powered proposal automation tool from OpenAsset, to modernize its process.
The team first heard about Shred.ai at the Deltek Conference, when their CTO returned excited about a new solution that could automatically read, organize, and summarize RFPs.
“Our interest was immediately piqued. Our daily conversations were always, ‘When did we last use this resume?’ or ‘Where’s that narrative about sustainability?’ and suddenly we had something that could quickly answer those questions for us or be the basis for new content.”
—Vanessa Zawodny, Marketing Manager
Vanessa led the implementation, diving into the system with enthusiasm.
“This kind of work is my jam. Work smarter, not harder. That’s what Shred.ai lets us do.”
—Vanessa Zawodny, Marketing Manager
Shred.ai’s core capabilities quickly transformed their workflow. By automatically generating proposal outlines, it cut hours of administrative work down to minutes. Its AI Chat feature allowed them to search across past proposals instantly, surfacing the exact narratives, resumes, or projects they needed. Just as importantly, the integration between Shred.ai, OpenAsset’s Employee Module, and Deltek Vantagepoint unified firm data into a single, connected ecosystem.
“We want employees to see OpenAsset as the central hub. Headshots, bios, project information—everything in one place. The more this data connects, the better it all works together.”
—Will Jovel, Head of Marketing and Business Development
For the team, Shred.ai became more than a time-saving tool; it became a creative collaborator.
“It’s like having a little intern who remembers everything. It handles the heavy lifting so we can focus on strategy and storytelling.”
—Vanessa Zawodny, Marketing Manager
Design Collective’s impressive results:
Within weeks, Design Collective began seeing measurable improvements.
“What used to take one to three hours now takes minutes. Outlines that I used to spend hours creating—now I just hit ‘shred,’ and it’s done. Then it’s just a matter of quality control and fine-tuning.”
—Vanessa Zawodny, Marketing Manager
The AI Chat function became their secret weapon—surfacing content from past proposals instantly.
“Somebody wanted to know when the last time we used a certain project in a proposal. I popped that into AI Chat, and two seconds later, it told me where. I looked like a superstar.”
—Vanessa Zawodny, Marketing Manager
Shred.ai also bridged the gap between Will and Vanessa’s parallel workloads.
“Now, I can see what Will has written, and he can see mine. It bridges that knowledge gap so we’re not duplicating effort.”
—Vanessa Zawodny, Marketing Manager
The newfound efficiency has allowed the team to refocus energy where it matters most: building compelling narratives and strategic themes.
“We can finally focus on what really matters to the client.”
—Will Jovel, Head of Marketing and Business Development
And while they’re already seeing strong results, the team is eager to expand its use of Shred.ai. They are particularly excited for the Proposal Studio and Go/No-Go that will add even more intelligence to their pursuit process. Will is particularly excited about the future of AI-assisted bid evaluation.
“It’s about going beyond outlines. I want AI to help us assess our best chances of success, based on our real experience.”
—Will Jovel, Head of Marketing and Business Development
For a small team with big ambitions, the transformation has already been clear.
“It’s early, but it’s exceeded my expectations. And we’re just getting started.”
—Will Jovel, Head of Marketing and Business Development
