The Challenge

When the managing partner at a small civil engineering firm found himself resetting passwords, troubleshooting VPN errors, and fielding printer complaints — he knew something had to change.

The team of 20 engineers was growing, taking on more municipal contracts and remote site work. But behind the scenes, their technology was becoming a bottleneck:

• Engineers couldn’t reliably access large CAD files when away from the office

• The network slowed to a crawl during peak hours

• Nobody really owned IT — support requests bounced between an overworked ops manager, a local freelancer, or “whoever could Google it”

• Critical files were stored on a single on-prem server with no verified backups

• Security? "We had antivirus and crossed our fingers," one team member joked

Deadlines were getting tighter, and internal disruptions were becoming a serious risk to client satisfaction. The team was frustrated. The leadership was distracted. And the firm was outgrowing its patchwork IT setup.

The Solution

The firm partnered with a Managed IT provider that understood how engineering teams work — and what they needed to stay focused on projects, not problems.

The transition began with a full audit, identifying key choke points and vulnerabilities. From there, the new team:

• Migrated files to SharePoint with synced libraries, allowing fast access to CAD drawings from anywhere

• Implemented centralized support with a ticketing system and SLA-backed response times

• Hardened security with MFA, patch management, and monitored antivirus across all devices

• Consolidated communications with Microsoft 365 and Teams

• Set up automated backups and disaster recovery to ensure no project data would be lost

• Met quarterly with leadership to review performance and align IT with upcoming growth plans

One engineer remarked, “It’s the first time I haven’t had to think about our network all month. I just log in and work.”