Client PortalManaged IT for engineering firms
IT Support for Engineering Firms in Melbourne's South East
An engineering practice produces documents that outlive the project and sometimes outlive the people who signed them. Drawings get reissued, models get federated, and ten years later somebody needs the revision that was current on the day the work was done.
That is a technology problem with a professional indemnity tail attached, and it is not solved by a faster laptop.
- Typical size
- 5 to 50 staff, often with a site-based half
- Pressure points
- Large model files, revision control, long retention
- Usual platform
- Microsoft 365, plus licensed design software
- Where we see it
- Dandenong South, Carrum Downs, the Hastings precinct
Want the number first? Our pricing is published: AgileCORE from $85 and AgileCOMPLETE from $130 per user per month ex GST, plus the AgileSECURE add-on at $44. Estimate your monthly figure in two minutes, or book a conversation.
Why engineering breaks ordinary IT
Most managed IT is designed around documents that are small
A general office runs on files measured in megabytes. An engineering practice runs on models and drawing sets that are an order of magnitude larger, opened by several people, from more than one location, all day. The design assumptions that work for an accounting practice do not survive contact with that.
| What bites | Why it happens | What we do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Opening a model takes minutes | Large files pulled across a connection or a sync client that was never sized for them. | Size the connection and the storage for the files you actually have, and put working sets where the work happens. |
| Two current revisions | Documents living in a personal drive and a shared one, with no single governed location. | One governed location with version history, so the issued revision is recoverable and provable. |
| Site staff cannot get the drawing | Access designed for an office, used by people who are not in one. | Access that works from a site or a vehicle without opening the whole environment to the internet. |
| Licences stranded on a dead machine | Expensive design software tied to a device nobody tracked. | A licence register we hold, and device replacement planned rather than reactive. |
| A project archive nobody can open | Backups kept, restores never tested, formats and permissions drifting over years. | Restores tested and written down, with retention configured rather than remembered. |
The part nobody owns
Half your risk sits in how you exchange files with other firms
Engineering work is collaborative by nature: architects, builders, certifiers, other consultants. Most practices exchange drawings through whatever the other party suggested, which over a few years becomes a collection of portals, transfer services and mailboxes nobody has reviewed.
Each one is a door into your material, and several of them are probably still open to people who left those firms years ago. Deciding how your practice sends and receives work is a governance decision, and it is one we will make with you rather than for you.
Scope
What we take responsibility for
Agreed in writing on day one in a Responsibility and Accountability Matrix.
Storage and performance
Sized for the files you actually open, not a generic office profile.
Microsoft 365
Licensing, document structure, retention and the controls most firms never turn on.
Devices and licences
Standardised, monitored, replaced on a plan, with the design software licences tracked.
Security and access
Multi-factor, role-based access and monitoring, aligned to SMB1001.
Published pricing
AgileMANAGED: structured IT from $85 per user / month
We publish our pricing because a practice that budgets properly deserves to know the number before the first meeting, not after the third.
AgileCORE
Remote support, monitoring, security baselines and Microsoft 365 management.
View AgileCORE →AgileCOMPLETE
Everything in CORE, plus onsite support, managed servers with 24/7 monitoring, and quarterly business reviews. Usually the right fit where there is a server room or a site presence.
View AgileCOMPLETE →Where we work
Based in Mornington, working through the industrial south east
Agile IT Solutions has been based in Mornington since 2007. The engineering and operational businesses we look after are concentrated through Dandenong South and the industrial corridor, where onsite support is a regular expectation rather than an exception. Most issues are resolved remotely, and onsite is included with AgileCOMPLETE.
Questions
IT questions from engineering practices
Our model files are enormous and everything is slow. Is that fixable?
Usually, and usually it is a design problem rather than a hardware one. The common causes are a sync client trying to hold everything locally, a connection sized for email rather than for models, or storage in the wrong place relative to the people opening it. We measure what your files actually are and where they are opened from, then put the working set somewhere that suits it. Buying faster laptops first is the expensive way to not fix this.
Do you support our design software?
We do not write it and we are not its consultant. We take responsibility for everything underneath: devices sized for it, the licences tracked so they are not stranded on a failed machine, storage and network that suit the files, backup, and the vendor relationship when something needs escalating. When the fault is in the application, we deal with that vendor rather than handing you a ticket number.
How should site staff get at current drawings?
Through managed access from a managed device, rather than by emailing a PDF that is current for about a day. The aim is that somebody on site opens the governed location and sees the issued revision, with the older ones still there in history. That is a Microsoft 365 configuration question and we will set it up, but the decision about who may issue a revision is yours.
How long do we need to keep project files, and can you prove we still can?
The retention period is a question for your practice and your insurer. What we make sure of is that whatever you decide actually happens: retention configured rather than manual, archives in a governed location, and restores tested by doing one, with the result written down. An untested backup of a ten-year-old project archive is an assumption, not a record.
Are we too small for this?
We work best with businesses of roughly 5 to 50 staff, and smaller teams growing into that range. The point at which this becomes worthwhile is usually when technology decisions start waiting because nobody owns them, which in an engineering practice often shows up first as nobody being sure which revision is current.
How do we get started?
A discovery conversation. We look at what the practice runs on today, how it is managed and where the gaps are, then set out what a structured managed service would look like. No obligation and no quote pushed at you in the first meeting.