IT for trades and construction starts at the job site.
The tablet lives on a dashboard. The site has one bar on a good day. The drawings changed on Tuesday and three of the five trades know it. The subcontractor who needed the folder in March still has it. None of that is described by an IT page written for a floor of desks, and most of it is not fixed by anything installed in an office.
Port Alberni and the Alberni Valley, and up and down the Island where the work is
- Field first, office second
- Devices replaced, not nursed
- Subcontractor access with an end date
- Photos filed where an argument can find them
The office is not where the work happens.
Almost every managed IT page describes a building. Workstations, a server cupboard, a printer down the hall, staff who sit down at nine. A construction firm has one of those and it is the smallest part of the operation. The machines that matter are in trucks, the network that matters is a trailer with an antenna on it, and the person whose day is ruined by a technology failure is standing in gravel with wet hands.
Six failures, and not one of them is a desktop.
These are the recurring ones. They are not exotic and they are not hard, but they are invisible from an office and they compound across a season. Ordered roughly by how often they cost a day.
Connectivity that is not there, and what to do about it
On this coast there are sites with no cellular service and no reasonable path to it, and there are sites where one carrier works and the other does not fifty metres away. That is the starting condition, not a fault to be escalated. What works is deciding, before the site opens, which of three states it is in — usable service, intermittent service, or none — and building the day around it. Usable service means the ordinary tools. Intermittent means everything captures locally and syncs when it can, which is only safe once you have tested what each app does when the connection drops, because some queue writes properly and some silently discard them. None means a defined sync point on the drive out and a crew that knows where it is. The failure is never the missing signal. It is a foreman who thought the daily had uploaded.
Devices that break as a matter of routine
Dust, rain, cold, concrete, a tailgate, a fall. A tablet lost on a job site is a Tuesday, not an incident report, and treating it as an exception is why replacement takes a week. The workable answer is a standard model with a case, enrolment that reconfigures a replacement without anybody rebuilding it by hand, a spare that already exists, and remote wipe on the one that is gone.
Subcontractor access, and how it ends
A framer needs the drawing folder for six weeks. An engineer needs the photo set once. A supplier needs nothing but keeps getting added to the group. The problem is never granting it, it is that nobody revokes it — so the access gets an expiry at the moment it is created, scoped to the one folder that sub needs, with a dated record of what was given and when it stopped.
Estimating and job costing, and the seam between them
The takeoff package, the estimating tool and the accounting system are three products from three vendors, and the money leaks in the seams between them. Whether hours land against the right job code, whether a change order reaches the estimate, and who holds the licence that belonged to an estimator who left. Also worth knowing before you need it: how the data gets out.
Drawings, and which set is current
One current set, superseded sheets marked as superseded, and an addendum that provably reached every trade rather than three of five. This is not a filing preference. Building to a revision that was replaced is a rework cost at best and a safety issue at worst, and the version that gets built is whichever one is open on somebody's tablet.
Photos, which are evidence
Hundreds a week, every one of them named the same thing, sitting in a camera roll on a personal phone belonging to somebody who may not work here next season. Progress, pre-cover, existing damage, the thing that was not our fault. Filed against a job and a date, off the personal device, and still there when the argument arrives two years later.
Three questions, answered in the truck.
Asked at mobilisation rather than at the first failure. None of them takes ten minutes, and each one prevents a category of problem that otherwise repeats on every job.
What does this site have, and what happens when it does not?
Which carrier reaches it, whether the trailer needs its own connection, and what the crew does on the day the connection is down. Answered as one of three states — usable, intermittent, none — because the workflow that follows is different for each and picking the wrong one is how a week of dailies goes missing.
Decided at mobilisation, not at the first outage.
Who is on this site who does not work for you?
Subcontractors, the engineer, the inspector, the owner's representative. Each of them may need something, most of them need it briefly, and every one of them is a person whose access has to end cleanly. BC puts safety coordination at a multiple-employer workplace on the prime contractor. Nothing puts technology coordination on anybody, which is exactly why it goes unowned.
Access granted with the end date already on it.
Where does the day go at the end of the day?
The daily, the photos, the delivery slip, the toolbox talk with signatures on it. If the answer is a personal phone and a text message to the office, the record exists until that phone is upgraded. Naming the destination once, at the start, is the whole intervention — and it is the reason the record is producible when somebody asks for it.
One destination, named before the first day.
A trailer is a branch office that gets towed away in October.
It needs most of what a small office needs and it needs all of it to be temporary, weatherproof and worth removing at the end. The list below is what gets specified before the trailer lands, because retrofitting it while a crew is waiting is the expensive version.
- Which carrier actually reaches this site, tested on site rather than assumed from a coverage map
- A router that takes a SIM, and an external antenna where the signal needs help
- A second path to the internet for the days the first one is down
- Wifi shaped to the compound, not broadcasting to the road
- A separate network for anyone who is not staff, kept away from the office machines
- A cabled printer that can put a full-size drawing on paper
- Somewhere lockable for the devices that stay overnight
- A decommissioning step, so the connection stops billing when the job closes
Specified as a list because a trailer is the one part of a construction firm that gets rebuilt from scratch several times a year. Written down once, it stops being a decision each time.
A job has three phases. Two of them get skipped.
Trades work is project-shaped and seasonal, and the technology has to be too. The ramp up gets attention because a crew is waiting. The middle gets attention because something broke. The close almost never does, which is where the licence bill and the open access both come from.
- Device count and licence count against the crew you are actually hiring
- Images and enrolment ready, so a new hire is working the same morning
- Subcontractor access templates written once instead of improvised per sub
- Spares on the shelf before the first week, not ordered after the first break
The predictable part. A seasonal ramp is the easiest thing on this page to plan for and the most reliably left until the week it starts.
- A cracked tablet swapped without anybody rebuilding it by hand
- Subs added and removed as trades come and go
- The current drawing set current, and the superseded one marked
- Job folders backed up, including the photos nobody thinks of as data
The running part. Most of it is remote, because most of it is accounts and access rather than hardware.
- Every subcontractor account actually revoked, and the revocation dated
- Photos and dailies archived against the job number while people still remember it
- Devices collected from anyone who has finished, and wiped if they are gone
- Licences released, and the trailer connection stopped rather than left billing
- The job folder made read-only, so the record cannot drift after the fact
The skipped part, and the one that pays. Everything expensive about the previous two phases is a close-out that never happened on the last job.
Half our sites have no cell service. What actually works?
An offline-first workflow and a known sync point, which is a design decision rather than a product. The crew captures on the device without a connection, and everything queues until it reaches signal — at the yard, at the trailer, or wherever the first bar appears on the drive out. The part worth testing before the crew depends on it is what each app actually does offline, because some cache read-only and quietly discard what was typed.
Tablets keep getting broken and lost. Is that an IT problem?
It is a budgeting problem that IT can make survivable. Breakage and loss on a job site are routine events, not incidents, so the useful questions are how fast a replacement is in a hand and what happens to the data on the one that is gone. A standard model, a spare on the shelf, enrolment that reconfigures a replacement without anybody rebuilding it, and remote wipe on the one in the ditch.
A sub needs the drawings for six weeks. How do we give access and take it back?
With an account that has an end date on it from the moment it is created, scoped to the folder that sub actually needs and nothing else. The failure mode is not malice, it is that nobody remembers to revoke. An expiry set at creation makes the default outcome closure, and a dated access record means you can answer who had what when somebody asks a year later.
Do you sell estimating or project management software?
No. The choice of estimating, takeoff and job-costing software belongs to the people doing takeoffs, and it is trade-specific in ways an IT provider should not be overriding. What is on offer is making the one you already chose work on the devices your crews carry, keeping the accounts and the integrations honest, and knowing how your data gets out if you ever leave it.
Our headcount doubles in April and halves in November. What does that cost?
More than most firms realise, because licences and devices are usually provisioned on the way up and never reclaimed on the way down. The seasonal swing is predictable, which makes it the easiest thing on this page to plan for: a documented ramp with device and licence counts attached, and a matching ramp-down that actually releases what it says it releases.
Who is responsible for IT on a site with four other trades on it?
For safety coordination, BC's rules put that on the prime contractor at a multiple-employer workplace. For technology there is no equivalent rule, which is exactly why it goes unowned — site wifi, the trailer connection and who gets on it are decided by whoever plugged something in first. Deciding it before the site opens takes ten minutes and prevents the guest network reaching the road.
Safety paperwork is the employer's. Making it reachable is IT.
WorkSafeBC sets real deadlines and real retention on documents that are created in the field and needed in an office. A preliminary incident investigation is due within 48 hours; the full report goes in within 30 days and gets posted at the workplace. That is a document written by somebody standing on a site, on a device, possibly with no signal — which makes it an IT problem the day it is late.
- Written where it happens Captured on the device on site, queued, and synced when there is signal.
- Findable by job and date Filed against the job number rather than in a mailbox somebody has to search.
- Still there later Retained past the point everyone involved has moved on, and producible on request.
What is not on offer, and the decision that is yours.
A page selling to this sector should say where its edges are, because the sector is used to being sold software it did not ask for.
We do not sell you a construction management platform. There are good ones, they differ sharply by trade and by the size of the jobs you take, and the choice belongs to the people doing takeoffs and running schedules rather than to an IT provider with a reseller margin. What is on offer is making the one you already chose work on the devices your crews actually carry — accounts, single sign-on where the product supports it, integration with whatever your bookkeeper uses, tested offline behaviour, and a clear answer about how your data comes out if you leave.
We do not replace your safety program. The obligations under BC's occupational health and safety rules are the employer's and they stay there. What technology can do is make the resulting records reachable from a site with poor signal, durable past the season, and producible when somebody asks — which is a real and specific piece of work, and it is not the same thing as writing your program or auditing it.
We do not promise signal where there is none. Some sites on this coast have no cellular service and no reasonable path to one. The honest answer for a two-week job in a hole is an offline workflow and a named sync point, not a satellite quote. For a long project on a fixed site the arithmetic changes and it is worth pricing properly — but it is arithmetic, not a default.
We do not tell you which devices your crews should carry, beyond one strong opinion: pick one model and stick to it. A fleet of one is dramatically cheaper to replace, image and support than a fleet of whatever was on sale, and on a job site the replacement time is the number that matters. Whether they are phones, tablets or both is a decision about your trade and your paperwork.
And the decision that is genuinely yours: whether crews carry company devices or their own. Company-owned means the fleet can be enrolled, standardised, wiped and reclaimed, and it means you are buying tablets that will be dropped. Personally owned means you are not buying them and also that you cannot enforce much, cannot wipe a device you do not own, and have to think carefully about where the job photos live. Both are workable. What does not work is not deciding, which is the state most firms are in, and it shows up the first time somebody leaves in July with a season of site photos on a phone.
The managed IT underneath all of this is the same agreement any business on the Island would sign. This page is what changes when the business works outdoors.
Tell us what your worst site looks like.
The one with no signal, the tablet that did not survive framing, and the sub who still has the folder. We will tell you which of those is a fix, which is a habit, and which is just the cost of working outdoors.
info@valleyedgeconsulting.io · 778-488-8618