Work / The Urban Institute
From reactive chaos to structured accountability.
I led the full lifecycle design and rollout of a centralized procurement system at The Urban Institute, turning a fragmented, reactive process into a structured workflow adopted across the organization. Clean submissions climbed from 42% to 68%, and weekly escalations fell by roughly 75%.
The problem
Procurement ran on email threads, spreadsheets, and verbal handoffs. Requests arrived incomplete, approvals stalled without visibility, and finance spent hours each week chasing missing information. The absence of structure created risk, delayed projects, and frustrated everyone in the chain.
My role
As systems designer and project lead, I owned the work end to end. I facilitated stakeholder workshops, mapped the existing workflow, named its failure points, designed the new system architecture, wrote the documentation, and led the change management effort that carried adoption across departments.
The process
I started where the work actually happened, then built the system around the gaps that surfaced.
Interviewed finance staff, department leads, and frequent requestors to map every step of the existing workflow and pinpoint where it broke.
Built a centralized intake with clear submission requirements, automated routing logic, and a real-time status dashboard.
Ran training sessions, shipped a reference guide, and opened a feedback loop so the system kept improving after launch.
Key decisions
Incomplete submissions simply could not be sent. Accountability shifted upstream, and the back-and-forth that had consumed hours of staff time disappeared.
A tiered framework set review depth by spend level, clearing bottlenecks for low-risk purchases while keeping scrutiny where it mattered.
Outcomes
Within one quarter of full rollout, clean submissions rose from 42% to 68% and weekly escalations dropped by roughly 75%. Staff reported far less confusion about where a request stood, and finance reclaimed an estimated 4 to 6 hours a week once lost to follow-ups. The system became the organization's model for how it approached operational redesign.
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