How an Engineering Association Simplified Reviewer Assignments and Eliminated Spreadsheets
Category
Awards
Industry
Non profit organization management
Overview
See how an engineering association streamlined complex reviewer assignments, eliminated manual score calculations and spreadsheets, and created a more scalable awards review process with RQ Platform.
Program impact
100% Manual Score Calculations Eliminated
Process change
Multiple Reviewer Groups Supported
Scalable growth
0 Scoring Spreadsheets Required - Hours saved doing more important tasks
Introduction
An engineering association in Washington, D.C. needed a better way to manage reviewer assignments for its annual awards program.
Not every reviewer had the same expertise. To ensure nominations were evaluated by the most appropriate people, reviewers needed to be organized into Primary and Secondary groups based on their knowledge and qualifications.
The process worked, but administering it required significant manual effort. Program administrators relied on Excel spreadsheets to categorize reviewers, coordinate assignments, calculate scores, and manage the review process.
Working with the association and incorporating feedback from other customers, the RQ team developed a more flexible approach to reviewer grouping and assignment—turning a customer challenge into functionality that could support other complex review programs as well.
Challenges
The association's awards program required a more sophisticated reviewer-assignment process than simply distributing nominations across a pool of reviewers.
Reviewers needed to be categorized into Primary and Secondary groups so nominations could be evaluated by individuals with the appropriate knowledge and qualifications.
Program administrators then needed to match those reviewer groups with the appropriate nominations.
This created several administrative challenges:
Reviewers had to be manually categorized based on expertise and qualifications.
Primary and Secondary reviewer assignments had to be coordinated across nominations.
Administrators relied heavily on Excel spreadsheets to manage the process.
Reviewer scores required additional calculations and reporting.
Assignments needed to remain consistent and reusable across future program cycles.
Any new process had to preserve a simple experience for reviewers.
As the program grew, the existing process became increasingly time-consuming and difficult to scale.
Solution
Rather than developing a narrow workaround for a single program, the RQ team gathered input from multiple customers to better understand how organizations with complex review processes needed to categorize and assign reviewers.
That feedback helped shape a more flexible reviewer-assignment solution.
Results
Rather than developing a narrow workaround for a single program, the RQ team gathered input from multiple customers to better understand how organizations with complex review processes needed to categorize and assign reviewers.
That feedback helped shape a more flexible reviewer-assignment solution.
Custom Reviewer Groups
Program administrators could organize reviewers into Primary and Secondary groups based on the requirements of the awards program.
The grouping structure was designed to be flexible so organizations could use reviewer categories that reflected their own processes, expertise requirements, or qualifications.
More Efficient Reviewer Assignments
Administrators could use reviewer groups and filtering tools to identify nominations and assign them to the appropriate reviewers more efficiently.
This reduced the amount of manual cross-referencing previously required in spreadsheets.
Automated Score Calculations and Reporting
A dynamic reporting template was created to calculate and report reviewer-group scores for individual nominations.
Instead of downloading scores and manually calculating averages and totals in Excel, administrators could access the information through a more streamlined reporting process.
Improved Filtering and Reporting
Customizable filters made it easier for administrators to organize nominations, manage reviewer assignments, and analyze results after scoring was complete.
This gave program staff greater control over a complex review structure without adding unnecessary steps for reviewers.
A Simple Reviewer Experience
While the administrative workflow became more sophisticated, the reviewer experience remained straightforward.
Reviewers could focus on the nominations assigned to them and complete their evaluations without having to manage the complexity happening behind the scenes.
The Results
The redesigned review process delivered immediate administrative benefits while also creating a more scalable approach for future award cycles.
Less Manual Administration
Automating reviewer grouping, assignments, score calculations, and reporting reduced the amount of time program administrators spent managing the process manually.
Excel Spreadsheets Were No Longer Required
The addition of automated calculations and reporting eliminated the need to maintain separate spreadsheets for reviewer-group scoring and calculations.
This reduced duplicate work and created a more centralized review process.
A More Scalable Review Process
The solution was designed to support multiple reviewer groups and larger numbers of nominations and reviewers, giving the association a process that could grow with its awards program.
Consistency Across Program Cycles
Reviewer assignment structures could be maintained for future cycles, reducing the need to rebuild the same process each year.
A Customer Need Became a Standard RQ Platform Capability
What began as a specific challenge for one awards program helped inform a more flexible and scalable feature.
By incorporating feedback from multiple customers, the RQ team developed functionality that could address similar reviewer-assignment requirements across other awards and application-based programs.
The result became part of RQ Platform's standard functionality, extending the value of the original solution beyond a single customer.
From Manual Workarounds to a Scalable Review Process
Complex review programs do not always fit a simple one-reviewer, one-application model.
Programs may need to consider reviewer expertise, qualifications, categories, conflicts, workload, or other factors when deciding who should evaluate each submission.
For this engineering association, replacing manual reviewer grouping, assignments, calculations, and spreadsheets with a more structured workflow made the annual awards process easier to manage and more scalable.
It also illustrates an important part of the RQ Platform approach: listening to customers, understanding the underlying program challenge, and developing flexible functionality that can benefit organizations with similar needs.
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