A regional general contracting firm managing commercial renovation and buildout projects across the New York Metro Area — 45 staff including project managers, estimators, field supervisors, and office administration handling 15 to 20 active projects annually across multiple simultaneous job sites.
Staff migrated to cloud
Manual work eliminated
Automated workflows deployed
From assessment to full deployment
The Challenge
The firm was running on a combination of tools that had accumulated without a plan: a shared email inbox for project documentation, text message threads between field supervisors and project managers for daily updates, spreadsheets for compliance certificate tracking, and a manual end-of-week reporting process that required a project coordinator to compile status updates from every active job site by phone and email before producing a single summary document.
It worked — until it didn’t. At peak capacity with 18 simultaneous projects, the coordination overhead was consuming the project management team. The project coordinator was spending the equivalent of more than half her working week on manual data collection, formatting, and distribution. Field supervisors were sending photos to personal phones. Compliance documents — certificates of insurance, safety training records, subcontractor licenses — lived in email folders that only one person knew how to navigate. When that person was out, the firm was effectively blind to its own compliance posture.
The managing partner had been told by their IT vendor for three years that the answer was a custom project management software build. Each quote came back at six figures and a six-month implementation timeline. What the firm actually needed wasn’t custom software — it was a properly configured Microsoft 365 environment and a set of automated workflows built on tools they were already paying for but not using.
Solved IT’s vCIO engagement produced that insight within two weeks of assessment. The technology roadmap replaced the custom software proposal entirely.
What Solved IT Did
Solved IT began with a vCIO-led assessment — mapping every manual process in the firm’s project management and administrative workflows, identifying the specific points where time was being lost, and evaluating what the existing Microsoft 365 licensing already included that wasn’t being used. The finding was consistent across every workflow: the firm owned the tools to solve the problem. They just hadn’t been configured.
IT Strategy & Advisory — vCIO Engagement The vCIO assessment produced a three-year technology roadmap and an immediate 90-day action plan. The custom software proposal was replaced by a Microsoft 365 configuration and Power Automate deployment plan that cost a fraction of the quoted build and could be delivered in weeks rather than months. The managing partner had a documented technology strategy for the first time — one that tied every investment to a specific operational outcome and included a clear sequence for what came first.
Cloud Migration — Microsoft 365 & SharePoint All 45 staff were migrated from a fragmented email-and-shared-drive environment to a fully configured Microsoft 365 deployment. SharePoint became the central repository for every project — each active job site received a standardized project workspace containing its contracts, drawings, compliance documents, daily logs, and photo library. Field supervisors access their project workspace from their phones; project managers see every update in real time from the office. The shared inbox was retired. The personal phone text threads were replaced by project-specific Teams channels with structured naming conventions that make every communication searchable and retrievable.
Power Automate — Workflow Automation Our AI Support & Cloud Automation Specialist built four automated workflows that eliminated the core manual processes identified in the assessment:
Daily Field Report Automation — Field supervisors complete a structured daily log in a SharePoint form. Power Automate compiles all active site reports each evening and distributes a formatted project summary to the managing partner and relevant project managers — with no manual compilation required. What previously took three hours of the project coordinator’s Friday afternoon now runs automatically every day.
Compliance Certificate Tracking — Subcontractor and vendor certificates of insurance, safety training records, and license documents are now submitted directly to a SharePoint intake form. Power Automate routes each document to the correct project folder, logs the expiration date, and sends automated reminders 30 days before any certificate expires. The firm’s compliance posture is now visible on a single SharePoint dashboard updated in real time.
Project Status Reporting — Project managers update a structured status form once per week. Power Automate generates a formatted executive report distributed to leadership every Monday morning — including budget status, milestone tracking, and open issues — with no manual aggregation.
New Project Onboarding — When a new project is created, a single form triggers automatic creation of the standardized SharePoint project workspace, Teams channel, document folders, and initial task list — a process that previously took a project coordinator 45 minutes now completes in under two minutes.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Deployment Microsoft 365 Copilot was deployed for the project management and administrative team — providing AI-assisted drafting for subcontractor communications, RFI responses, and client update emails, and summarization of long Teams conversation threads that span multiple days across active projects. Project managers report a meaningful reduction in time spent on written communication without any reduction in communication quality.
Managed IT Solved IT assumed managed IT responsibility for the full 45-person environment — covering helpdesk support, patch management, endpoint security, and ongoing platform management. When the automation workflows need updating as the firm’s processes evolve, the same team that built them manages the changes.
The Results
- 22 hours of weekly manual work eliminated — daily field reporting, compliance tracking, project status compilation, and new project setup automated across four Power Automate workflows; project coordinator's manual reporting burden reduced by over 80%
- Real-time visibility across all active projects — managing partner and project managers have live access to field reports, compliance status, and project milestones from any device; no more end-of-week data collection calls
- Field-to-office communication centralized — personal phone text threads replaced by structured Teams channels with searchable, retrievable communication history on every active project
- Technology roadmap in place — vCIO engagement produced a three-year plan tying every future IT investment to a specific operational outcome; the managing partner now makes technology decisions with a framework instead of reacting to vendor proposals
- Compliance certificate expiration eliminated as a risk — automated tracking and 30-day advance reminders mean no certificate lapses go unnoticed; compliance dashboard available for client or insurance carrier review on demand
- Custom software proposal replaced entirely — $[X] six-figure custom build replaced by Microsoft 365 configuration and Power Automate deployment at a fraction of the cost, delivered in three weeks instead of six months
