IT for construction companies

Construction is the sector we have the most experience in. In Rijssen alone we manage the IT of contractors, tilers, plasterers and screed layers. What those companies have in common: the work happens outside, the administration has to add up at the office, and both need the same data.

Construction software that holds it all together

Estimating, work preparation, time registration and invoicing all hang together in a construction company. Those packages often make demands a standard office setup cannot meet: their own application server, a database that has to be backed up consistently, and access from outside.

An example from our own practice: for a construction company in Rijssen that builds villas, we manage an environment with more than thirty workplaces. It runs a domain controller, a terminal server, a RemoteApp server and a separate server for the construction software with its network portals. Project managers, estimators and subcontractors work on the building site in exactly the same environment as the people at the office.

Working from the building site

A site manager with a tablet in a shed on a plot without fixed internet still needs to reach drawings, work orders and photographs. We arrange that over a secure connection rather than through files that are emailed back and forth and then exist in four versions.

Subcontractors without giving away the keys

Subcontractors need part of your data, not all of it. We set up access so that an external party sees the project they work on and nothing else, and so that the access ends when the project does.

Downtime costs more here than elsewhere

If a server fails at an accountancy firm, people work an hour later. In construction, twenty people at three sites stop while material keeps arriving. That is why we build these environments so that there is not one single thing everything depends on, and we test the restore rather than assuming it works.