Crawford Higgins Associates

About the client

A multidisciplinary practice built on trust

Crawford Higgins is a multidisciplinary professional consultancy working across architecture, building surveying, structural engineering, project management, and land surveying. Based in Hexham, Northumberland, the business supports domestic, commercial, and public sector clients, primarily across the North East and wider UK.

Established in January 2000, the practice draws on a team of architects, chartered building surveyors, engineers, and chartered building contractors to provide a professional consultancy service to a wide range of public and private sector clients. From within the organisation, Crawford Higgins can draw upon a wealth of experience to ensure high standards and individual attention to every client, built on traditional values, quality and exceptional customer care.

With services ranging from surveys and structural calculations through to project coordination and complex refurbishment work, Crawford Higgins relies on a joined-up, in-house delivery model where different areas of expertise need to work together efficiently.

The challenge

Job detail spread across separate processes

Crawford Higgins handles a wide range of job types, including site investigations, topographical surveys, building surveys, main elements surveys, boundary investigations, structural calculations, structural design, and monitoring surveys.

Each job requires accurate setup, clear ownership, and the ability to capture important job-specific information from the outset. Admin staff needed a simple way to create jobs, record the correct details, associate the work with the relevant company and contact, and ensure the right internal process was followed.

The company also delivers work on behalf of different service providers, meaning communication needs to be carefully managed — email activity, appropriate signatures, customer contact history, and job-related correspondence all needed to be easy to track and access.

On top of this, the business needed visibility across active and completed jobs, with the ability to report on work in progress, job types, activity levels, and invoicing. Once a job is complete, the next step is to generate an invoice — making the link between operational delivery and finance especially important.

The solution

A system configured around Jobs

OpenCRM has been configured around the way Crawford Higgins works, helping the team bring together Companies, Contacts, Emails, and Jobs in one central system.

Familiar terminology

By renaming Projects to Jobs, OpenCRM uses terminology that is familiar to the team and better reflects their day-to-day processes, making the system easier to understand and helping staff work in a way that mirrors their existing language and workflow.

Consistent job setup

Jobs can be created by admin staff with tailored fields to capture the specific details needed for each piece of work, helping reduce gaps, duplication, or reliance on separate notes and spreadsheets. OpenCRM also supports structured job numbering, including different sequential number sets based on job type — helping the team organise, identify, track, and reference jobs across the business.

Managing multiple service providers

Email history is stored against the relevant records, supporting better communication and making it easier for colleagues to understand what has already been discussed. For a business delivering work on behalf of different service providers, this centralised approach is particularly useful, helping ensure the right correspondence, email signatures, and contact details are associated with the right job and provider context.

Visibility & reporting

A clearer picture of the workload

OpenCRM gives Crawford Higgins better visibility across its workload by making job information easier to search, review, and report on. The team can run reports on Jobs to understand job types, completed work, and outstanding items — supporting better management oversight and helping the business keep track of operational performance without relying on disconnected systems.

Because Emails are linked to the relevant Companies, Contacts, and Jobs, the team can also build a clearer picture of what has happened, what still needs to happen, and who is responsible for the next step.

Connecting jobs and invoicing

Once a job is completed, OpenCRM supports the next stage of the process by helping trigger invoice creation through Zapier integration. This helps reduce manual rekeying, improves consistency, and creates a smoother link between job completion and invoicing.

The benefits

A practical system built around real jobs

Using OpenCRM helps Crawford Higgins:

• Manage Companies, Contacts, Activities, Emails, and Jobs in one place
• Use familiar terminology by renaming Projects to Jobs
• Capture job-specific information consistently at setup
• Support different job types with structured numbering
• Track work across surveying, investigations, structural design, and related services
• Keep email communication connected to the relevant client and job records
• Manage work delivered on behalf of different service providers
• Run reports on Jobs for better operational visibility
• Connect completed jobs to invoice generation using Zapier

The result

Structure from setup through to invoicing

OpenCRM gives Crawford Higgins a practical CRM system that supports the way its team already works. By centralising job information, client communication, activity tracking, reporting, and invoice integration, OpenCRM helps the business improve visibility, reduce admin pressure, and manage a wide range of professional consultancy services more efficiently.

For a multidisciplinary firm delivering detailed, technical work across multiple service areas, OpenCRM provides the structure needed to keep jobs organised from initial setup through to completion and invoicing.