Consigli Constructs Better Team Communications
Consigli, a fourth generation family-owned business, established in 1905, is a full-service construction manager serving academic, healthcare, institutional, corporate, landmark restoration and federal clients throughout New England and New York. With offices in Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut and New York, Consigli has been recognized annually as one of the best places to work by The Boston Globe, Boston Business journal, Hartford Business journal, and Mainebiz. The company takes pride in its reputation as a local builder and always keeps an emphasis on providing their teams with the best tools to do their best work and to support local communities.
Read the Full StoryThe Challenge
Construction management is no small task. Each job site hosts a task force comprised of various Consigli construction experts, plus the job owner, architect, and so on. Multiply that by dozens of simultaneous projects, and there is a substantial risk of information slipping through the cracks. Knowing that good communication and documentation is vital throughout every stage of the construction process, Consigli implemented SharePoint, Microsoft’s collaboration software, on enterprise-issued iPads, in order to store, sync, and share their “paper trail” of contracts, blueprints, site maps, project emails, and more remotely. SharePoint is an outstanding knowledge management property, but accessing SharePoint from an iPad has its limitations. Consigli needed an application that would give field employees a user experience similar to the one they would have using a desktop, and help bridge the offline gap when they have spotty connectivity at a job site.
The Solution
Infragistics designed SharePlus to provide business users with uncompromised mobility and access to business intelligence. Chief Information Officer at Consigli, Anthony Chiaradonna, spearheaded Consigli’s adoption of SharePlus, beginning first with his colleagues in the C-Suite.
Infragistics’ team of mobile device experts configured SharePlus specifically to address their business needs, including Consigli branding. Essentially, Consigli got a custom-designed tool without having to create it from scratch. After a successful launch, Consigli rolled out the application to Project Managers and other departments Consigli set up a SharePlus project portal for every construction site, a place where employees everywhere–at the office, on-site, on the road–can access all of the documents associated with the job. Construction workers in the field, for example, can take a picture of a job site and put it into the SharePoint environment for evaluation back at the headquarters. They can access designs and make annotations based on new information or urgent client requests.
SharePoint is where we keep files and SharePlus is how we access them.
The Benefits
SharePlus liberates Consigli from “email jail”–no longer do employees have to email documents and drawings to colleagues and clients, which always carries security concerns. It has helped Consigli conduct paperless meetings; with central access, SharePlus cuts down on the need to print documents.
Consigli has even expanded the project to external contacts. Because many documents have to pass through owners, architects, inspectors, and so on, Consigli provides their partners a SharePlus license and issues them an iPad, making it easy to share all project documentation from any location. All in all, SharePlus helped Consigli leverage the investment they made in SharePoint.