Change 01
Expertise unified
Client Solutions, Our Experts, and Our Thinking — three separate nav items — consolidated into a single Expertise hub with Practices, Priorities, and Technologies as distinct lenses.
Change 02
About Us restructured
20 flat, ungrouped pages — including duplicates — reduced to 6 structured sub-sections. Each now has a clear parent, editorial owner, and numbered ID for dev handoff.
Change 03
Markets separated from capability
"Who We Work With" was buried inside Client Solutions. Now its own 2.0 Markets section with Local/State, Federal, Private Industry, and International Development as distinct client contexts.
Change 04
Resources consolidated
Webinars, Insights, Newsletters, and Videos were scattered. Now unified under 4.0 Resources with consistent content-type taxonomy and shared detail page templates.
Change 05
Content governance introduced
Numbered IA system (x.x.x) applied across all pages — enabling consistent dev handoff, QA tracking, and editorial ownership across 13 defined template types and 6 global regions.
1
Ungrouped values content consolidated. "How We Lead," "How We Live," and "How We Work" had no structural relationship to each other or to the section they lived in. All three now live under 6.1.0 Our Approach alongside Safety, Quality, Resilience, and Sustainability — a coherent editorial unit with clear scope.
2
Duplicate resolved. "How We Give" appeared twice in the original — once mid-list and once near the bottom, likely from different authoring sessions. The redesign consolidates to a single 6.5.0 How We Give with a permanent ID that prevents re-duplication through content governance.
3
Editorial content moved to Resources. "Blog" and "Cultural Threads Blog" were buried in About Us, making them hard to discover and disconnected from related content. Both are now surfaced through 4.0 Resources → 4.2.0 Insights, where they're findable alongside thought leadership, webinars, and newsletters.
4
Operational content relocated. "Health & Safety," "Compliance & Ethics," and "Quality" don't belong in brand storytelling — they're operational commitments. These now live under 6.1.0 Our Approach (Quality) or are surfaced through appropriate practice-area and legal contexts, reducing cognitive load for visitors seeking company values vs. compliance information.
20 → 6
Top-level About Us items reduced to structured parent sections
2 → 1
Duplicate "How We Give" entries resolved to a single governed page
0 → 6
Numbered IDs applied — enabling dev handoff and editorial governance
Clear
Scope per section — editors know exactly what belongs in each parent
1
A Priorities and Technologies lens introduced. The original IA had no way to surface cross-cutting issues (PFAS, Lead in Drinking Water) or proprietary technology (Sky Wave, Droughtlook) as distinct from general practice areas. These are now first-class content types under 1.2.0 and 1.3.0 — giving CDM Smith competitive differentiation a visitor can actually find and navigate.
2
Practice areas given a consistent structure. "What We Do" and "How We Work" existed as ungrouped sub-sections inside Client Solutions with no numbered taxonomy. Now, each of the 6 practice areas (Water, Transportation, Environment, Energy, Facilities, Management) has a dedicated node under 1.1.0 with a permanent ID, shared template, and clear editorial scope.
3
"Our Experts" was CTA-only — no supporting content. Five CTA pages sitting at top nav level with nothing to anchor them to the broader capabilities story. Expert discovery is now integrated into the 1.0 Expertise hub, giving people context before they search for an individual — a fundamental improvement to the user journey for professional services audiences.
4
Market context and thought leadership separated cleanly. "Who We Work With" (market sectors) and "Our Thinking" (content types) had no structural relationship to practice capability — but were both nested inside or adjacent to it. Markets now live at 2.0 and Resources at 4.0, each with their own content taxonomy, enabling independent navigation paths for business development vs. research audiences.
3 → 1
Separate expertise sections consolidated into a single navigable hub
+2
New content lenses added: Priorities (cross-cutting issues) and Technologies (proprietary tools)
Cleaner
User journey: practice → market → project → resources — now a logical sequence
Governed
Numbered IDs on all 16 Expertise nodes — consistent dev handoff across 6 global regions