About the Chartered Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors

The Chartered Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors (CICES) is the professional body for civil engineering surveyors in the UK and beyond. It sets and upholds professional standards, awards qualifications and chartership, and supports its members through their careers with guidance, community and continuing professional development.

Its disciplines sit at the technical heart of how infrastructure is measured, mapped and managed. That gives the institution a real responsibility, both to its profession and to the public who depend on that work. Like any membership body, it can only meet that responsibility if the systems running behind the scenes hold up.

A Platform Worth Getting Right From the Start

CICES wanted its core systems working as one: a central CRM, a website and a member portal, joined up into a single ecosystem. The ambition was clear from the outset. Getting there depended as much on alignment as it did on technology.

One platform, and a whole organisation to bring with it

A transformation of this kind touches almost everyone in an organisation, from the people managing membership day-to-day to the leadership thinking about the institution’s future. Each group sees the project through its own lens, and each has a view on what the new platform should do. Bringing those views into a single, agreed-upon direction before any build began was as important as the technology itself.

A technical project that everyone needed to understand

CRM and portal projects come with their own language, much of it unfamiliar to the people who will use the system every day. If stakeholders cannot picture what is being built, they cannot meaningfully shape it or sign it off with confidence. CICES needed a partner who could translate the technical into plain terms, and keep translating at every stage.

A Discovery-Led Approach to the Whole Ecosystem

Bluelight treated the CRM, website and portal as one piece of work, run through a single structured, discovery-led programme, ensuring that a decision in one area always accounted for its effects on the others. The brief covered how the project would be run as much as what it would produce, with discovery counted as a deliverable in its own right.

Discovery as a deliverable in its own right

Discovery came first, and it answered the questions that decide whether a project succeeds.

• What was CICES setting out to achieve, and why did it matter?
• Who needed to be involved?
• How and when would the work be delivered?

The document that came out of it set out objectives and scope, risks and assumptions, benefits and success criteria, roles and responsibilities, and the governance holding it all together. Both sides had one reference point to work from, and a controlled foundation to carry into delivery.

A collaborative model built on playback

From there, the work was deliberately collaborative. Bluelight ran consultation and stakeholder engagement sessions, then used playback sessions to show CICES what had been captured and how it would translate into the system. Decisions were validated step by step as the project developed. Sandbox and portal demonstrations let stakeholders watch the platform take shape and respond to what was in front of them.

Communication ran through every session. Bluelight explained complex concepts in terms that made sense to people who do not work in technology, so everyone in the room could follow the detail and contribute to it. That clarity is what turned a technical project into a shared one.

A Connected Platform Built on Microsoft Dynamics 365

The finished solution brings CRM, website and portal together into one integrated environment.

What This Means for CICES

The platform has now been delivered, so formal performance metrics will follow as it beds in, and the foundation it already gives CICES is clear.

Confidence in the solution and the delivery

By the time stakeholders were reviewing the platform in sandbox and portal demonstrations, the response was consistently positive, both in what they saw and in how the project had been run. The two challenges CICES set out with, aligning a wide group of stakeholders and making a technical project understandable, were met directly through the way Bluelight worked.

A platform delivered, specified and agreed

CICES now has a delivered, fully specified platform: Dynamics 365 CRM, an integrated website and member portal, a defined migration path, and a single specification agreed upon by everyone. Just as importantly, it moved forward with a shared understanding of what was being built and why, which is the part of any transformation that is hardest to retrofit later.

A partnership that set the tone

Stakeholders described being impressed not only with the system itself but also with the consultation, engagement and playback sessions that surrounded it: sessions that were well-run, clearly explained and respectful of people’s time.

I would tell another membership organisation to expect Bluelight to deliver to an agreed timeline while remaining flexible in how the specification is interpreted.
They were able to amend and adapt the system to meet our required outcomes, and they delivered the agreed solution on time and within budget.
We wanted to build a long-term relationship with a vendor, and our experience throughout the project has reinforced that decision.

• Darrell Smart
• Operations Director
• Chartered ICES

Bluelight is a trusted Microsoft and Umbraco partner, delivering tailored CRM and digital solutions that help membership organisations and charities simplify processes, engage their audiences, and drive meaningful impact.

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