CetraRuddy
CetraRuddy’s Growth Engine: Real-Time Resource Management With Mosaic
Download
CetraRuddy
's full story here.
Background
CetraRuddy is an integrated architecture and interior design firm with a focus on housing. Their portfolio is largely residential and that work manifests in many different ways, including adaptive reuse and commercial-to-residential conversions and ground-up multifamily developments across New York City. Their current workload leans heavily into adaptive reuse, breathing new life into outdated buildings and redefining what home can mean in an urban context.
The firm also engages in student housing, cultural, and civic work, and those projects often still relate back to the idea of housing in some way. CetraRuddy’s integrated model and housing-first mindset allow them to explore the full spectrum of what it means to create spaces people live in, always with a focus on livability, purpose, and impact.
The Challenge
Before Mosaic, staffing was managed through a single Excel file that was duplicated and updated weekly, always out of date, and disconnected from project finances. Resourcing decisions were reactive. As the firm scaled and took on multiple new projects with varied schedules, this system quickly broke down. The spreadsheet couldn’t track project phases, availability timelines, or team capabilities with any reliability. Their ERP, Ajera, wasn’t a viable solution for resource planning either, it was outdated, poorly maintained, and hard to navigate.
The Solution
CetraRuddy needed a fast, easy-to-adopt platform that could scale with them and provide real-time visibility into people, projects, and planning. Mosaic checked all the boxes: intuitive enough for quick onboarding, powerful enough to support long-term growth, and flexible enough to manage complex resourcing needs.
With Mosaic, users can quickly toggle between a high-level view of studio-wide capacity and a detailed, project-specific analysis. This allows leadership to immediately assess whether teams were economically feasible, whether staffing levels made financial sense, and whether a project was set up to be profitable. As Jonny Whitaker put it, Mosaic wasn’t just a short-term fix, it was a system they could grow into and rely on for the long haul.
The Results
Since implementing Mosaic, CetraRuddy has experienced their best year ever in 38 years of business with measurable, firm-wide gains across utilization, revenue, headcount, and margins. These were transformational improvements driven by greater visibility and planning precision.
- Utilization: Before Mosaic, utilization rates hovered between 77% and 80% for years. Shortly after onboarding, that jumped to 85%, and year-to-date numbers are now averaging 90%.
- Headcount: The firm grew from about 65 people to 135 in less than two years. While this growth isn’t solely attributed to Mosaic, Whitaker stated: “We couldn’t have grown as quickly as we did without it.” The platform gave the team the structure and foresight needed to confidently staff up while maintaining control.
- Revenue: Between 2023 and 2025, CetraRuddy doubled their revenue. The implementation of Mosaic in 2024 was one factor that impacted the increase.
- Profit: They estimate a 3-4% increase in profitability over the past 18 months. For CetraRuddy, that translates to millions in additional profit, a financial shift Mosaic helped make possible through smarter allocation and better resourcing decisions.
Conclusion
CetraRuddy’s transformation wasn’t from adopting a new tool, it was about unlocking a new way to plan their business. Mosaic provided visibility and accountability in planning that was needed to allow the growth they’ve seen since 2023. With smarter staffing and reliable financial foresight into projects, CetraRuddy now operates with more precision and accuracy. Mosaic supported, enabled, and empowered CetraRuddy’s expansion, and the system they built will scale with them as they continue to grow.
.svg){kind=small}