Founded in Denver in 1945, Martin/Martin is a national civil and structural engineering firm with a diverse portfolio of hundreds of projects spanning multiple markets and service areas. Like many engineering firms, their work speaks for itself—but getting that work in front of clients, prospects, and prospective employees is easier said than done, especially when new projects are constantly being completed.  

To remedy this, Martin/Martin partnered with TOKY, a digital marketing and brand strategy agency with deep experience in the AEC space, to redesign their website. The goal was to showcase Martin/Martin’s vast breadth of work in a way that could keep up with their rapid growth. Together, they turned to OpenAsset’s WordPress Connector to bridge the gap between their digital asset management system and their new site.

The challenge

Martin/Martin had a common problem in the AEC industry: Too much content, too many decentralized storage methods, no consistent formatting, and not enough time to manage it all.

Their digital assets lived on a local server at their Colorado headquarters, which was difficult to access for employees who worked remotely or out of distributed offices. As Patrick Trahern, Communications Manager at Martin/Martin, put it:

“I’m not located in the same state as the headquarters. When you try to go in and find files in a folder system, trying to even get the thumbnails to show up takes forever. It’s almost torture.” 

— Patrick Trahern, Communications Manager at Martin/Martin

As the company’s growth and the post-COVID environment caused more and more of the staff to work outside the main office, this became a major bottleneck for many marketing functions. Writing proposals and importing assets to programs like InDesign was aggravatingly slow and complicated. But it was especially a problem for the website.

With 230+ construction projects to feature, the content entry process was a massive undertaking. The previous redesign had relied entirely on manual work: project data was managed in spreadsheets, and images were pulled into Photoshop one by one, resized, and uploaded individually. With a small marketing team where everyone carries multiple responsibilities and no one owns the website full-time, that kind of lift was simply unsustainable.

There was also a consistency problem. Images were often duplicated across folders, with no single source of truth. The work required to keep the site updated was often just as daunting as building it in the first place.

The solution

To solve their asset management challenges, Martin/Martin turned to OpenAsset’s DAM. Its cloud-based infrastructure, quick load speeds, AEC focus, comprehensive compatibility with other programs, and ability to consolidate assets in an organized and accessible space made it an easy choice. 

Cloud-based storage eliminated the slow server access issue, and made it easy for distributed employees to find and use assets. And because OpenAsset integrates directly with InDesign (where Martin/Martin produces the majority of their proposals), the team gained a centralized hub that supports their entire proposal workflow.

Patrick Trahern, Communications Manager at Martin/Martin, explained their choice: 

“We were looking for something cloud-based that wouldn’t just provide those thumbnails much quicker, but allow you to connect to multiple programs. Not just for the website, but for many different programs, including InDesign, where we produce a lot of our proposals. Being able to incorporate OpenAsset and see our assets so quickly was a really big factor for what we wanted to do.”

— Patrick Trahern, Communications Manager at Martin/Martin

But the problem of bridging the gap between Martin/Martin’s assets and their website still remained. To solve this problem and lead their website redesign, Martin/Martin turned to TOKY, who had the AEC digital marketing expertise and technical fluency to know what the integration needed to do before a single line of code was written. TOKY recommended using the OpenAsset WordPress Connector plugin, which became the connective tissue of the entire project. 

Melissa Allen, Interactive Director at TOKY and leader of the project, explained: 

“What was really exciting about this project was learning that there was an actual plugin OpenAsset had developed for WordPress that would streamline the whole process of having project data in OpenAsset connect to the website, so that everything is up to date. They don’t have to manually update projects, images, data, things like that — it’s all sort of a bridge from one section to the other. Which is not only a time-saver for implementation, but an ongoing time-savings in keeping the website updated.”

— Melissa Allen, Interactive Director, TOKY

Patrick Trahern was equally enthusiastic.

“The timing was just great because in addition to moving to cloud-based asset storage, we also wanted to do this brand new website. The fact that the plug-in came out at the same time was kind of serendipitous.” 

— Patrick Trahern, Communications Manager at Martin/Martin

The WordPress Connector removes the manual work of maintaining website content by pushing projects, project details, and approved images from OpenAsset directly into WordPress. Because OpenAsset remains the source of truth, updates in the DAM carry through to the site — reducing outdated pages and ensuring teams always publish the most up-to-date content.

Leading the technical implementation and strategy, TOKY let the connector handle the data transfer, while TOKY’s team focused on building a site infrastructure that had the balance of flexibility and automation that Martin/Martin needed. TOKY set up the site architecture to have drafted project pages pre-populated with the appropriate project data, with confidential data flagged. This gave Patrick and the Martin/Martin team a clean workflow to easily review, customize, edit, and publish as needed, rather than building every page from scratch, or worrying about projects with confidential client data being automatically surfaced on the website. 

The results

With connected technologies and workflows, TOKY helped Martin/Martin to substantially cut down the time and energy spent on asset retrieval and content entry. Together, they were able to accomplish: 

• 230 projects uploaded in three days. A process that previously took weeks of manual effort was completed in a fraction of the time. 
• Efficient ongoing site maintenance. With a structured database of project data that can seamlessly sync to Martin/Martin’s site, uploading new projects and maintaining the site became a manageable, routine task.
• Easier, faster asset retrieval. Everything from project and employee data to images and boilerplate text is now stored in one cloud-based, organized system that can be accessed from anywhere, making website updates, proposal creation, and everything in between more seamless for the entire distributed team.
• A scalable process for a lean team. Martin/Martin’s marketing staff all carry responsibilities beyond the website. Without dedicated web personnel, a system that reduces the burden of content management was crucial. 

“The time savings was tremendous. There’s just no overstating how long content entry takes on a website.”

— Melissa Allen, Interactive Director, TOKY

“I would recommend this to any AEC firm that does not have the ability to have full-time staff on the website. Even with full-time staff, this would be a benefit.”

— Patrick Trahern, Communications Manager at Martin/Martin

Overall, integrating the OpenAsset DAM with the WordPress Connector has allowed the Martin/Martin team to showcase its impressive portfolio while preserving its team’s time and energy — a benefit that has a ripple effect across all marketing functions. 

Ready to get more out of your assets? 

Whether you’re planning a website redesign or looking for a more structured way to organize your project data, OpenAsset DAM and our WordPress Connector can help you close the gap between your digital assets and your asset usage — at a fraction of the manual effort.