ACEC-ND: engineering a website for success

The American Council of Engineering Companies of North Dakota is the local branch of the member-supported national organization for engineering firms. Although they made an initial effort at building a website, but it lacked the functionality and aesthetics the organization needed.

Premiere Pages was contracted to perform a complete redesign of the site, which has recently launched at acecnd.org. It features a client-editable news section which uses Premiere's proprietary content management tools. There's also an events calendar which keeps members apprised of all meetings and events in the organization. Most exciting is the new membership database, which the public may use to find an engineering firm that has specific capabilities and where it is located in the state.

But behind the scenes is where most of the brains of the site are. The directors of ACEC-ND knew many engineering firms change their capabilities and even their location information as they expand each year. Instead of forcing member firms to submit information to the head of the organization to begin a slow process of corrections, it was decided that member firms would be able to edit their own information online. Secure password access to such administrative functions is given to each member firm, who can also create non-administrative users of their own, who are restricted to members-only content like Requests for Proposals and the MessageBoard.

David Hoffman, the project manager for the ACEC-ND project, explains, "ACEC-ND was the first real test of the new Premiere Pages' team. We implemented tools we've never had before, and it's been a fantastic success. I feel the site offers a great model for other membership organizations to follow. Empower the administration to get important information out as they need to. Empower the members to control their own member data and create their own users. And make these enabling technologies easy to use."