Industries
IT for construction and trades
Jobsites that stay connected.
happier IT provides managed IT and cybersecurity to construction and trades businesses across Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario. The work is different from office IT in one specific way: half your network is temporary, mobile, and sitting in a trailer on a variable connection, so that is where we start.
Who it's for
We already know what your software is called.
This is the part most providers learn on your time, and bill you for.
Procore, Autodesk Construction Cloud, Bluebeam
Project management and drawing markup. Both are useless from a trailer with 2 Mbps of shared LTE, so the network design has to start at the jobsite, not the head office.
Sage 300 CRE, Jonas, Viewpoint Vista
Construction accounting and job costing. Often the oldest system in the business and the one nobody is allowed to break. We support it as it is, and plan its replacement honestly.
Microsoft 365, SharePoint and Teams
Where the drawings, RFIs and photos actually live. Usually the thing most in need of tidying, permissions inherited from a project that finished four years ago.
Site connectivity, cameras and VoIP
LTE routers, satellite links, temporary fibre, IP cameras and phones that follow the crew. Monitored centrally so a dead site is noticed before the foreman calls.
What's included
Four failure modes, in the order they cost you money.
Not scare stories. These are the ordinary things that turn a good week into a bad one on a construction business.
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The trailer goes offline on a pour day
Nobody can pull the current drawing set, the inspection app will not sync, and the concrete does not wait. Site connectivity is treated as infrastructure here, not as a laptop problem.
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The invoice email that was not from the supplier
Construction runs on emailed approvals between many parties with large sums attached, which is exactly the shape of transaction that gets intercepted. Email authentication and payment-change verification are the cheap fixes.
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Mobilisation and demobilisation
A new site needs a working network, phones, cameras and accounts in days, not weeks, and it all needs to come back when the job ends, instead of quietly billing forever.
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Seasonal headcount
Forty accounts on in March and off in November. If offboarding is informal, ex-staff keep access to the project files. This should be a checklist, not a memory.
What it costs
Your client's security questionnaire is usually stricter than the law.
Privacy law for a private-sector contractor is mostly PIPEDA, the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, with provincial PIPA legislation applying in Alberta and BC. In practice, for a construction business, that covers employee records, payroll and subcontractor details rather than anything exotic.
The requirement that actually bites is contractual: prime contractors, owners and public-sector clients increasingly attach a security schedule to the contract. It typically asks for multi-factor authentication, endpoint protection, tested backups, an incident contact and a response process.
We help you answer those truthfully, and where the honest answer is "not yet", we give you a date rather than a paragraph of hedging.
A note on cyber insurance
Renewal questionnaires now decide premium and, sometimes, eligibility. The questions are largely the same list as above. Getting them right is worth real money, and it is usually a few weeks of work rather than a project.
The free assessment walks the same ground.
Go deeper
Sectors we go deeper on
Each of these has its own software, its own compliance regime and its own bad day. They get their own page for that reason.
IT for electrical contractors
Dispatch that holds.
Managed IT for electrical contractors in Alberta, BC and Ontario: dispatch and mobile forms that work from a van, estimating support and ESA record keeping.
IT for plumbing contractors
The 2am call, answered.
Managed IT and phone systems for plumbing contractors in Alberta, BC and Ontario: after-hours call routing, ServiceTitan and Jobber support, on-truck invoicing.
IT for HVAC contractors
Two networks, kept apart.
Managed IT for HVAC contractors in Alberta, BC and Ontario: building automation kept off the office network, plus maintenance renewals that stop slipping.
IT for concrete and masonry contractors
The pour goes ahead.
Managed IT for concrete and masonry contractors in Alberta, BC and Ontario: pour-day connectivity, batch ticket data, and cure records kept for the long term.
Why us for this
What we can show you, and what we cannot yet.
We work with construction and trades businesses across Western Canada, and it is one of the sectors we know best.
What is verifiable today: our certifications across Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, HP/HPE, VMware, CompTIA and Red Hat, Certified Ethical Hacker credentials on the security team, and a security operations centre staffed by our own people in Canada.
Questions
What people ask before they sign anything.
Can you support jobsite internet as well as the office?
Yes, for most construction clients the jobsite is the harder half of the job. That means designing for LTE, satellite or temporary fibre, prioritising the applications that matter, keeping guest Wi-Fi off the working bandwidth, and monitoring every site centrally so an outage is noticed before the crew reports it. Our piece on network monitoring for construction goes through it in detail.
Do you know Procore and Sage?
We support them as the platforms they are: accounts, permissions, integrations, the network they depend on, and the vendor relationship when something needs escalating. We are not a Procore implementation consultancy, and we will say so rather than learning on your time.
Our general contractor is asking about our security. What do they want?
Usually a short questionnaire: multi-factor authentication on email, endpoint protection on laptops, tested backups, a named security contact and an incident process. Almost all of it is ordinary hygiene rather than anything exotic, and most of it can be evidenced in a couple of weeks if it is already in place. We help you answer it truthfully, including where the honest answer is "not yet, here is the date".
What privacy rules apply to us?
In the private sector across Alberta, BC and Ontario, personal information is generally governed by PIPEDA (the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act), and in Alberta and BC, by provincial PIPA legislation. For a contractor that mainly means employee records, payroll data and subcontractor details. Contract terms from your client are often stricter than the law, so those are usually the ones to design around.
We have five sites and a head office. Is that a problem?
It is the normal case, not the exception. What matters is that every site is visible in one place and that adding or removing one is a defined process. Multi-site is where informal IT stops scaling.
Related
Where to go next.
Want to know what this would look like for you?
A 30-minute call. No slides, no audit fee, no obligation. We ask what is breaking and tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.