INDUSTRIESI09Construction & Trades
The office is
wherever the job is.
IT for construction companies, contractors, and trade businesses. Most of your people are not at a desk, half your sites have no fixed connection, and the paperwork still has to be done. That is the problem worth solving.
WHAT WE HEAR
The four sentences we hear most in your sector.
- 01
The crew is on site and the plans are in the office.
Or on a set of printed drawings two revisions behind, which is worse. Current documents on a phone is the single highest-value change for most trade businesses.
- 02
Job sheets come back three days late and half filled in.
Because the process was designed for someone sitting down, and nobody on a site is sitting down. It has to work with one hand, in the rain, on a bad connection.
- 03
There is no internet on site for the first three months.
And the site office still needs to run, take deliveries, and file safety records. Temporary connectivity is a solvable problem that most people just endure.
- 04
Health and safety records only exist if someone remembers.
Which is a genuine liability rather than an administrative annoyance, and it is exactly the sort of thing that should not depend on memory.
THE STACK
The systems you actually run.
Not a list of logos. These are the platforms we support, migrate, and get called about in this sector. If yours is missing, it usually means we have not worked with it, and we will say so rather than nod along.
Job and field management
Where quoting, scheduling, timesheets, and invoicing actually happen. Mobile performance matters more than desktop features.
- Fergus
- Tradify
- simPRO
- NextMinute
- AroFlo
- ServiceM8
- Buildertrend
Project and document control
On larger jobs the client or head contractor picks the platform, so you work in several at once.
- Procore
- Autodesk Construction Cloud
- Aconex
- PlanGrid
- Bluebeam Revu
- Dropbox and SharePoint
Site connectivity and devices
The hardest part of this sector, and the one most providers avoid because it involves leaving the office.
- 4G and 5G site connections
- Temporary site Wi-Fi
- Ruggedised tablets
- Site office setups
- Starlink for remote sites
Safety, compliance, and finance
Records that must exist and be retrievable, created by people who are not at a computer.
- HazardCo
- SiteSoft
- Site inductions and SWMS
- Xero
- MYOB
- Payroll and timesheets
WHERE WE HELP
Four things we do for construction & trades specifically.
- 01
Current documents on site
The right revision of the drawing, the job sheet, and the safety record available on a phone or tablet at the site, working on a poor connection and caching for when there is none. This is the change crews notice within a week.
- 02
Site connectivity that arrives with you
Temporary connections for site offices, mobile and fixed wireless where fibre is months away, and satellite for genuinely remote work. Specified against the site rather than hoped for.
- 03
Devices that survive the environment
Hardware chosen for dust, water, drops, and gloves, managed centrally so a lost tablet is a wipe rather than a data loss, and replaced under an agreement rather than out of petty cash.
- 04
Paperwork that happens at the source
Timesheets, job sheets, variations, and safety records captured on site, at the time, by the person who was there. It is more accurate, it is faster to invoice from, and it is the version that holds up afterwards.
WHAT IT COSTS
Per user, per month, plus per site connectivity
Priced per user per month across office and field staff, with site connectivity quoted per site because it varies enormously between an urban fit-out and a rural build. Where a device fleet refresh is the obstacle, asset finance can spread it across a term so it lands as a monthly cost rather than a single quarter.
WHERE TO START
The services that matter most here.
FAQ
Questions from your sector
01How do we get internet to a site with no connection?
Usually with a 4G or 5G fixed wireless connection and an external antenna, which can be set up in a day and moved between sites. Where coverage is genuinely poor, satellite is now a practical option for a site office. Neither is as fast or as cheap as fibre, and both are far better than three months of nothing, which is the usual alternative.
02Which job management system should we use?
It depends on the shape of your work rather than on feature lists. Fergus and Tradify suit service and maintenance trades with lots of small jobs. simPRO and AroFlo suit larger contractors with complex projects, stock, and multiple crews. Buildertrend and Procore suit build projects with client involvement and document control. We implement all of them and, just as usefully, we will tell you when the one you already have is fine and the problem is how it was set up.
03What devices hold up on a construction site?
Ruggedised tablets and phones with proper ingress protection ratings and screens that work with wet or gloved hands. A consumer tablet in a rubber case is a compromise that usually fails within a year. The other half of the answer is management: enrolled devices mean a lost or stolen tablet is wiped remotely rather than being a data problem.
04Our crews are not very technical. Will they actually use this?
Only if it is faster than what they do now, which is the real test and the one most rollouts fail. That means very few taps, working offline, no logging in every morning, and no training course. We involve crews in the design rather than announcing it to them, and we measure adoption rather than assuming it.
05Can you help with health and safety record keeping?
We handle the technology underneath it: making sure inductions, hazard records, and toolbox talks are captured on site and stored somewhere retrievable, and that the platform you have chosen works reliably on the devices your people carry. The obligations themselves sit with you and your health and safety adviser, and we will not pretend otherwise.
06We work on client platforms like Procore. Can you manage that?
Yes. On larger jobs you rarely choose the platform, so you end up in Procore on one project and Autodesk Construction Cloud or Aconex on the next. We handle access, permissions, and onboarding your people onto each one, and we keep a register so leavers are removed from client platforms as well as from yours.
Start with the crews.
Get current documents and job sheets working properly on the tools your people already carry. Everything else in this sector is easier once that works.
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