# Bloom Works Operating System

Independent Product & Operations Consultant · 2026

## Connect the systems behind the work

Bloom Works is a design and digital-services firm working with federal, state, and local government. As the firm grew, its operations team wanted to bring information about engagements, contracts, staffing, and budgets closer together, while reducing the manual work involved in keeping it current.

I had previously contributed to one of Bloom’s client engagements and returned to help with this internal effort. The brief was to improve data flows, automate operational tasks, and assess how their existing Airtable source-of-truth could evolve to better support the firm’s needs as it grew.

Bloom valued the flexibility of its existing tools. Its Airtable base already supported capacity planning; I identified an opportunity to connect that information with contracts, budgets, and the broader story of each client engagement. A more connected data model would support both the requested automations and the different teams relying on that information.

## Model the work before automating it

Through interviews and workshops with engagement managers and practice area directors, we worked out the relationships the system needed to represent.

An important distinction was between an **engagement** and a **statement of work**. One engagement could span several signed statements of work, each with its own budget and staffing, while contributing to a broader story about Bloom’s work and impact. A single contract could also support more than one engagement narrative. The system needed to accommodate those relationships rather than assume everything lined up one to one.

I prototyped a data model connecting engagements, contracts, budgets, staffing, and impact narratives, tested it with the team, and migrated the existing data into the new structure. That became **Trellis 2.0**, Bloom’s internal operating system.

### The relationships the system needed to hold

**Engagements**

The story of a piece of client work and the impact it had.

**Statements of work**

Signed scopes, each with its own budget and staff.

**People and staffing**

Allocations, availability, and who has worked on what.

## Build the workflows on that foundation

The connected records gave us a foundation for the operational automations Bloom wanted.

I used **Make** to build data pipelines for operational and budget information, bringing each statement of work’s budget alongside its staffing. I introduced **PandaDoc** to support contract workflows, including generating agreements from staffing records and flagging upcoming renewals and change orders.

I also built interfaces for the different teams using the system. Engagement managers could see the work they were running, practice leaders could review availability and allocations, and colleagues could find who was working on an engagement or had worked on one before.

With impact stories connected to the engagements they described, we added AI-assisted drafting to help teams develop engagement narratives from those records.

## Give teams a shared basis for decisions

Trellis 2.0 brought engagements, contracts, staffing, budgets, and impact into a shared working reference. Bloom retained the flexibility it valued while giving its teams a more connected view of the work.

My contribution combined product discovery with hands-on implementation: understanding what each team needed, shaping the data model, and carrying it through prototyping, migration, interfaces, and automation. The work expanded from individual workflows into a connected operating system, developed with the people who would use it.

## Scope of my work

Discovery, workshops, data modeling, prototyping, migration, interfaces, and automation with Airtable, Make, and PandaDoc, working with Bloom’s operations team and practice leaders.

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[Gideon Emmanuel](https://gideon-emmanuel.com/about/) · [Let’s talk](mailto:gideon.m.emmanuel@gmail.com)

Canonical page: https://gideon-emmanuel.com/work/bloomworks-trellis/