IT support for builders and refurbishment contractors
Managed IT for small construction, refurbishment and fit-out firms across London and Essex. An office of a few people, a lot of sites, and a payment process that fraudsters know all about.
What we usually find in a building firm
Construction IT is unusual: the office is small, the workforce is scattered, and the sums moving through email are large. That combination attracts a very specific kind of attack.
- Invoice fraud is the big one. Construction is among the most targeted sectors in the UK for business email compromise: someone watches the mailbox, waits for a real supplier or subcontractor invoice, and sends it on with different bank details. One payment can be worth more than a year of IT.
- The drawings live everywhere. Plans, specifications, site photos and O&M manuals end up split between WhatsApp, a personal cloud account and one laptop that nobody backs up.
- Sites have no fixed line. The office has broadband; the site cabin has whatever signal it can find. Getting a variation approved should not depend on someone driving to a hill.
- You hold data people care about. Subcontractor details and bank accounts, CIS and payroll records, and on domestic work, clients' home addresses, keys and alarm codes.
- People come and go. Subcontractors and temporary staff get access to email and files, and that access often outlives the job.
- Tenders now ask about your IT. Cyber Essentials is a condition of bidding on most public sector contracts and on many main contractor frameworks. Firms without it quietly stop being invited.
What we look after
Day to day
- Microsoft 365 email, files and licences — one place for drawings and correspondence, reachable from a site as easily as from the office
- The computers, networks and connections your accounts and job software runs on, whether that is Xero, Sage, QuickBooks or a project system. We do not support those applications themselves; their vendors do
- Office workstations, laptops, tablets and phones, including the ones that live in vans
- Site connectivity over 4G or 5G where there is no line, and printing and scanning that works when it is needed
- Access set up quickly for new people, and removed the day a job ends
Where the risk sits
- Multi-factor authentication on every mailbox — the single most effective defence against invoice fraud
- Email filtering and impersonation controls, plus a simple internal rule for verifying changed bank details before anything is paid
- Drawings, photos and job files in one controlled place, backed up and searchable, not scattered across personal phones
- Encryption on laptops and phones, and remote wipe when one goes missing from a van
- Backups kept apart from the live system and tested by restoring them
- The technical requirements of Cyber Essentials put in place properly, if certification would open up work for you
Worth saying plainly
We are an IT provider. We do not run your CDM paperwork, your health and safety file or your tender submissions, and we will not claim that hiring us makes your firm certified.
What we do is get the technical controls in place and evidenced, so that when a main contractor or a public body asks how you protect their information, the answer already exists. If you decide to go for Cyber Essentials, we prepare the technology side and tell you honestly what still needs doing on the policy side.
Start with an honest look at your setup
Our free IT health check reviews what you have and returns a written summary — what is solid, what is exposed, and what a fraudster would try first. No obligation afterwards.
Managed support starts at £45 per user per month where everything is in the cloud, or £60 per user where you run your own server, with a minimum of £300 per month. If your office is three people, a monthly contract may be more than you need — say so and we will point you at pay-as-you-go remote support instead. Our prices are published either way.