CJ A/S doubled in size without losing what made them good — construction process management preserved quality and customer focus

When growth threatens quality in construction

Budget overruns in construction rarely come from poor craftsmanship. They come from coordination failures — from tasks changing hands without clear ownership, from expectations that were never made explicit, and from team members working to different standards. At CJ A/S, these risks were present before growth accelerated. The company had grown steadily since its founding in 2011, but as demand surged, the coordination challenges that were already there began to scale with the business.

Each new hire brought their own way of working, shaped by previous employers and personal experience. Top management recognised that without intervention, this would dilute the process discipline behind CJ’s early success. The “CJ way of working” — the combination of consistency and customer focus that had built the company — risked becoming informal knowledge held by a shrinking share of the team. A key structural problem made this harder to ignore: budget overruns on construction projects typically fall on the contractor. There is little room for coordination failure.

How Refine Consulting and Gluu built a shared process foundation at CJ

Refine Consulting, a Gluu consulting partner specialising in construction process management, led the project. They began by securing full alignment at the top: management needed to commit to a single, standardised approach before any process mapping could take hold. The ambition was to map and digitalise all core end-to-end processes across the four phases of a construction project: Offer, Design, Planning, and Execution.

Refine Consulting ran a series of workshops at CJ. The goal was not just to document existing practice, but to surface shortcomings, validate improvements, and involve the people doing the work in shaping the result. Selected employees reviewed and confirmed every process and work instruction. Continuous improvement events gave staff the opportunity to bring their own experience to the table — so that CJ’s best practice reflected the insights of the whole team, not just management.

Gluu was the platform chosen to underpin the entire effort, from the first mapping sessions through to task execution on construction sites. Following Gluu’s three-level implementation approach, CJ moved through standard processes that documented best practice, shared processes that incorporated employee feedback, and finally executed processes that drove real work on site.

How CJ uses Gluu across construction projects

Processes are now mapped, owned, and executable in Gluu across all four construction phases. Every task has a named owner. Every customer touchpoint is visible. CJ’s CEO Hans Jørgen Ebbesen explains how that changes day-to-day project management: “In Gluu, we can — throughout the process — see whether activities have been done and where work is not moving. We can also see who is responsible for the specific activities. This way we can help each other to get things done in the right order and in a timely manner.”

Employees use Gluu not just to execute processes, but to improve them. Improvement ideas are reported directly in the system, picked up by process owners, and the best ones are incorporated into the management system. Hans Jørgen explains: “The improvement ideas that constantly flow from our employees are all reported digitally, picked up by process owners, and some incorporated into our management system.” With digital workflows, the experience of new employees is embedded into existing processes — ensuring the company always works to current best practice, not last year’s.

The process phases with the most improvement cycles so far have been bidding and offer. Execution on-site has had fewer cycles, which means the full impact of Gluu on production efficiency will become clearer as more projects complete under the new approach.

Having standardised processes that everyone can follow — and that everyone can improve — changes how a construction company operates at every level, from site coordination to customer communication. If you want to see how that works in practice, Gluu’s free trial is a straightforward place to start.

What changed since implementing Gluu

CJ has more than doubled in size since 2019. The growth that once threatened to dilute the company’s working methods has instead been absorbed by the process foundation Refine Consulting helped build. More than 100 new employees have been onboarded to a common starting point — with standard processes, shared documentation, and a project portfolio overview from day one.

“Today we can follow all our projects from offer to delivery – all processes, activities and documents have been standardized so that all employees work in a standard way.”

Hans Jørgen Ebbesen
CEO, CJ A/S

The value has been highest on large projects, where tasks change hands between many roles across extended timelines. CJ can now guide customers into a collaborative project mindset from the first day, because every customer activity and expectation is explicitly mapped. Anyone involved can tell the customer exactly what is happening and what comes next. All critical documentation follows the process from start to finish.

For smaller projects, the primary gains have been a clearer overview, more efficient construction management, and simpler documentation. There is no longer a risk that each new employee works to a different standard. Unnecessary handoffs between team members have been reduced, and stepping in to cover a colleague on a project has become straightforward — because the process is in Gluu, and that is where everyone works.

The next phase is already planned: CJ intends to bring sales, health and safety, equipment management, and other areas into Gluu, extending construction process management across the full operation.

In brief