Managed IT Services for Construction

A job-site trailer needs what a small branch office needs, set up in days and torn down when the building is done. A good trailer setup includes:

A business-grade LTE or 5G router with an external antenna, plus a second carrier or a satellite service such as Starlink where coverage is weak.

A small managed firewall that connects the trailer to the office over an encrypted VPN, so the accounting server is never exposed to the internet.

Separate Wi-Fi networks for staff, subcontractors, and cameras, so a sub's infected laptop can't reach your project files.

A printer or plotter, a plan-review display, and spare charged tablets, all tracked as assets so they come back when the job closes.

Connectivity also matters for licensing. Bluebeam Revu 21 requires each user to sign in online and allows a 30-day offline grace period, so a trailer dark for weeks can lock people out of their markup tool. When a job wraps, wipe, log, and restage the equipment for the next project.

Your IT provider doesn't run your projects, but it must understand how each system is licensed, accessed, and backed up:

Procore or Autodesk's construction cloud, now sold under the Autodesk Forma name. PlanGrid is no longer sold to new customers, and Autodesk points PlanGrid users to Forma Build.

Bluebeam Revu and Studio Sessions, where several people mark up the same PDF at once. The Basics plan can't create new Sessions or Projects; Core, Complete, and Max can.

Sage 300 CRE, Sage Intacct Construction, or Trimble Viewpoint. Whether it runs on your own server or is hosted, someone has to patch it, back it up, and control who can approve payments.

Microsoft 365, where most plan sets, bids, and correspondence actually live in email, Teams, and SharePoint.

Public works payroll. Contractors on most California public works projects must submit certified payroll records through the DIR's online system, so payroll staff and their systems need to stay up.

When a project engineer can't sync drawings, the cause is usually an account, a device, or the network, and that is squarely the IT provider's job.

Switching providers mid-project is mostly inventory and access. A sound onboarding inventories every device, account, and license; collects admin credentials and domain records from the outgoing provider; installs monitoring and security tools on office and field devices; and proves backups actually restore before anything else changes.

Most general contractors with office staff and field supervisors fit The Watch Tower, which adds unlimited help desk, a 24/7 SOC, dark web monitoring, immutable backup, and vulnerability scanning to 24/7 monitoring and managed detection and response. Firms still running Sage or a file server on premises usually need HQ Complete, which adds managed servers, server backup and disaster recovery, an IT roadmap and budget, and quarterly business reviews. Plans start at $85 per user per month, and monthly minimums apply.

For a real example, our construction case study describes how we secured a Seal Beach contractor with Fortinet firewalls, VPN access for project managers, encrypted Dell laptops with remote wipe, and redundant cloud backups.