IT for trades, built for the truck and the site.
The tablet lives on a dashboard. The site gets one bar on a good day. The drawings changed Tuesday and three of five trades know it. We set up the devices, access and records so the field keeps moving, and the office stops chasing it.
Port Alberni and the Alberni Valley, and up and down the Island where the work is
- Sign-in blocked, all sessions revoked9:14 am
- Mailbox converted to shared, office manager given access9:16 am
- Licence removed, back in the pool9:21 am
Front desk printer says offline again. Nobody touched it.
It picked up a new address after the power blip. Fixed it remotely and pinned it so it stays put. Try printing now.
Printing. Thank you!
- Field first, office second
- Devices swapped, not nursed
- Subcontractor access with an end date
- Photos filed where a dispute can find them
The office is the smallest part of the job.
Most managed IT is designed around a building: workstations, a server cupboard, staff at desks by nine. A construction firm has one of those, and it matters least. The machines that count are in trucks, the network that counts is a trailer with an antenna, and the person a failure hurts is standing in gravel with wet hands. We start there.
Six failures, none of them at a desk.
The recurring ones. Nothing exotic, nothing hard, but invisible from an office and they compound across a season. Roughly in order of how often they cost a day.
Connectivity that is not there, and what to do about it
On this coast some sites have no cell service and no reasonable path to it, and on others one carrier works and the other fails fifty metres away. That is the starting condition. Before the site opens we put it in one of three states: usable, intermittent, or none. Usable gets the normal tools. Intermittent means everything captures locally and syncs when it can, once we have tested what each app does when the connection drops, because some queue properly and some silently discard. None gets a set sync point on the drive out. 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 lost tablet on a job site is a Tuesday. Treating it as an exception is why replacement takes a week. Our answer: one standard model in a case, enrolment that sets up a replacement automatically, a spare already on the shelf, 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 photos once. A supplier needs nothing and keeps getting added anyway. Granting access is easy; nobody revokes it. So every grant gets an expiry the moment it is made, scoped to the one folder that sub needs, with a dated record of what was given and when it ended.
Estimating and job costing, and the seam between them
The takeoff package, the estimating tool and the accounting system come from three vendors, and money leaks through the seams. Do hours land on the right job code? Does a change order reach the estimate? Who holds the licence of the estimator who left? We keep those seams tight, and we know how your data gets out before you need it to.
Drawings, and which set is current
One current set, superseded sheets marked as superseded, and an addendum that provably reached every trade, not three of five. Building to a replaced revision is rework at best and a safety issue at worst, and whatever is open on somebody's tablet is what gets built.
Photos, which are evidence
Hundreds a week, all named the same, sitting in a camera roll on the personal phone of someone who may not be here next season. Progress, pre-cover, existing damage, proof it was not your fault. We get them filed against a job and a date, off the personal device, and still there when the dispute shows up two years later.
Three questions, answered in the truck.
Asked at mobilisation, before the first failure. None takes ten minutes, and each one kills a problem that would otherwise repeat on every job.
Side gate, the dog is friendly. Tank is in the crawlspace — bring the short dolly.
- 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 the day the connection is down. Answered as one of three states, usable, intermittent or none, because each needs a different workflow and guessing wrong 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 rep. Each may need something, most need it briefly, and every one needs their access to end cleanly. BC puts safety coordination at a multiple-employer workplace on the prime contractor. Nothing puts technology coordination on anyone, which is why it goes unowned. We own it.Access granted with the end date already on it.
- Where does the day's paperwork end up?The daily, the photos, the delivery slip, the signed toolbox talk. If the answer is a personal phone and a text to the office, the record lasts until that phone is upgraded. Name the destination once, at the start, and the record is there when someone 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, all of it temporary, weatherproof and easy to pull at the end. We spec this list before the trailer lands, because retrofitting while a crew waits is the expensive way.
What gets specified before it lands
- 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
A list, because the trailer is the one part of a construction firm that gets rebuilt from scratch several times a year. Written once, it stops being a fresh decision each time.
A job has three phases. Two of them get skipped.
Trades work is project-shaped and seasonal, so the technology is too. Ramp-up gets attention because a crew is waiting. The middle gets attention because something broke. Close-out almost never does, and that is where the licence bill and the open access come from.
Before the season
- 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 here to plan, and the most often left until the week it starts.
During the job
- 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. Mostly remote, because most of it is accounts and access, not hardware.
When the job closes
- 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. Most of what is expensive in the first two phases is a close-out that never happened on the last job.
Before we start
Half our sites have no cell service. What actually works?
An offline-first workflow and a known sync point. The crew captures on the device without a connection, and everything queues until it finds signal: at the yard, the trailer, or wherever the first bar shows up on the drive out. Before the crew depends on it, we test what each app actually does offline, because some cache read-only and quietly drop what was typed.
Tablets keep getting broken and lost. Is that an IT problem?
It is a budgeting problem that IT makes survivable. Breakage and loss on site are routine, so the questions that matter are how fast a replacement is in hand and what happens to the data on the lost one. One standard model, a spare on the shelf, enrolment that sets up a replacement automatically, 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 carries an end date from the moment it is created, scoped to the folder that sub needs and nothing else. The risk is never malice; it is nobody remembering to revoke. An expiry at creation makes closure the default, and a dated access record answers who had what when someone asks a year later.
Do you sell estimating or project management software?
No. Estimating, takeoff and job-costing software belongs to the people doing takeoffs, and it is trade-specific in ways an IT provider should not override. We make the one you already chose work on the devices your crews carry, keep the accounts and integrations clean, and know 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 get added on the way up and never reclaimed on the way down. The swing is predictable, which makes it easy to plan: a documented ramp-up with device and licence counts, and a 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 puts that on the prime contractor at a multiple-employer workplace. For technology there is no equivalent rule, so site wifi, the trailer connection and who gets on it are decided by whoever plugged something in first. We settle it before the site opens. Ten minutes, and the guest network stops reaching the road.
Safety paperwork is the employer's. Making it reachable is IT.
WorkSafeBC sets real deadlines and retention on documents created in the field and needed in an office. A preliminary incident investigation is due within 48 hours; the full report within 30 days, posted at the workplace. That document gets written by someone on a site, on a device, maybe with no signal, so the day it is late it becomes an IT problem.
- Written where it happensCaptured on the device on site, queued, and synced when there is signal.
- Findable by job and dateFiled against the job number rather than in a mailbox somebody has to search.
- Still there laterRetained past the point everyone involved has moved on, and producible on request.
What we do not sell, and the call that is yours.
This sector gets sold a lot of software it never asked for, so here is where our edges are.
We do not sell construction management platforms. Good ones exist, they differ sharply by trade and job size, and the choice belongs to the people running takeoffs and schedules, not to an IT provider with a reseller margin. We make the one you chose work on the devices your crews carry: accounts, single sign-on where the product supports it, integration with whatever your bookkeeper uses, tested offline behaviour, and a clear answer on 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 stay there. What we do is make the resulting records reachable from a site with poor signal, durable past the season, and producible on request. That is real, specific work, and it is different from writing or auditing your program.
We do not promise signal where there is none. Some sites on this coast have no cell service and no reasonable path to it. For a two-week job in a hole, the answer is an offline workflow and a named sync point, not a satellite quote. For a long project on a fixed site the numbers change, and we quote it on its own.
On devices we hold one strong opinion: pick one model and stick to it. A fleet of one is far cheaper to replace, set up and support than a fleet of whatever was on sale, and on a job site replacement time is the number that matters. Phones, tablets or both is a call about your trade and your paperwork.
The decision that is yours: company devices or personal ones. Company-owned means the fleet can be enrolled, standardised, wiped and reclaimed, and you are buying tablets that will get dropped. Personally owned means you are not buying them, but you cannot enforce much, cannot wipe what you do not own, and have to think hard about where job photos live. Both work. Not deciding does not, and it shows up the first time someone leaves in July with a season of site photos on their phone.
Underneath, it is the same managed IT agreement any business on the Island signs. This page is what changes when the business works outdoors.
Show us your worst site.
The one with no signal, the tablet that did not survive framing, and the sub who still has the folder. We come back with which is a fix, which is a habit, and which is just the cost of working outdoors.
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