Bricsys.

A two-person frontend team. A platform built on Google Web Toolkit with a shrinking talent pool. A product that had spent years saying yes to every deal instead of listening to its users. We migrated to Vue.js, and that one decision changed everything that followed.

The Situation

Bricsys develops BricsCAD, one of the leading alternatives to AutoCAD, alongside Bricsys 24/7, a cloud-based common data environment for the construction industry. 24/7 handles document management and workflow automation, CAD review and markup, role-based access control, and approval processes across large project teams serving general contractors, architects, engineers, and consultants.

The product had grown by saying yes. Every deal brought new feature requests, and every feature request got built. Over time the platform lost clarity about what it was actually for. The interface showed it: complex, inconsistent, shaped by individual client demands rather than a coherent product vision. Nobody was doing user research. Features were designed on assumptions about how construction professionals worked, and nobody tested whether those assumptions were right.

The frontend was built on GWT (Google Web Toolkit), a Java-to-JavaScript compiler Google had stopped actively developing. The framework’s talent pool was shrinking every year. Finding developers who knew GWT was hard. Finding good ones who wanted to work in it was harder. The two-person frontend team couldn’t grow, and the platform couldn’t evolve. The technology choice had become the ceiling.

What We Did

Rescue & Recovery

GWT couldn’t be incrementally migrated. We rebuilt the entire platform from scratch in Vue.js. The framework choice wasn’t just about better tooling. It was about unlocking the hiring pipeline. Vue.js meant we could recruit from a talent pool that actually existed, which meant the team could grow, which meant the product could move forward.

Architecture & Modernization

The technical rebuild was only half the work. The deeper challenge was bringing product focus back to a platform that had spent years expanding in every direction.

We introduced UX-centric thinking to a company that hadn’t had it before and built a framework the team could run without us. User research replaced assumptions. We established a process where every new feature goes through research sessions with real users, design validation through usability testing, and interactive prototyping in Figma before any code gets written. The UI team and frontend team now run this process themselves, 20+ sessions per feature. It gave them the tools to question whether a feature is solving a real problem or just satisfying a request, and the confidence to say no when the answer is the latter.

Team Building & Leadership

With Vue.js in place, we could finally hire. The frontend team grew from 2 to 6 engineers. We established the engineering practices, code review processes, and quality standards to maintain velocity as the team scaled. The UX practice we introduced became part of how the company thinks about product development, not a temporary initiative but a permanent change in how features get evaluated and built.

The Result

One framework decision set off a chain reaction. Vue.js opened up hiring. Hiring tripled the team. A larger team could support a real UX practice. The UX practice refocused the product on what users actually needed instead of what the next deal demanded.

The platform that had been built to close deals was rebuilt for the people who use it every day. The UX research process, the engineering practices, and the team all outlasted our involvement. That was always the point.