IT Support for Architecture and Engineering Firms in DFW

We work for you.

Our managed IT has no long-term contract and no onboarding fee, and clients stay for decades anyway.

Our clients' systems are watched around the clock by a staffed security operations center, every day of the year. Very few IT companies offer that to a small business, and we do.

We do not advertise and we do not do hard sells. Almost every client has been with us more than ten years. Most have been with us about twenty.

We resell nothing and take no vendor commissions, so nobody pays us to recommend their product.

Within our scope, we document the domains and administrative accounts your business controls. That documentation is yours whenever you want a copy, including when you leave.

A drawing is not an ordinary office file

The studio of a small architecture and engineering practice: an adjustable drafting table with a hand drawing taped to it and a parallel rule, immediately beside a dual-monitor workstation on a desk, with a large-format plotter out of focus behind.

The model opened fine this morning. Now synchronization will not finish, people have changes sitting in separate local copies, and tomorrow's issue set depends on them.

Putting a workshared Revit central model in OneDrive, SharePoint, Dropbox or Google Drive adds another service touching the files. Autodesk warns that Revit's worksharing protections do not account for those sync services. The result can be a corrupted central model or lost changes when people synchronize at the same time.

We help choose the worksharing method for the network your firm actually has and keep the central model out of folders also managed by an ordinary sync service. That decision should not fall to whoever is closest to the deadline.

A shared folder does not settle who can save

AutoCAD does not manage SharePoint or OneDrive file checkout and locking. Two people can open the same DWG without a warning and create conflicting versions.

Before moving project folders, ask how the proposed setup handles two people opening the same drawing. Seeing the file on both computers is only the first test. Your team also needs to know whose changes it is working from.

A drawing that opens can still be incomplete

A drawing can need external references, sheet sets, plot styles and fonts. In Civil 3D, data shortcuts depend on source drawings. Moving a source drawing or losing access to its folder can break those shortcuts.

We check that the references and data shortcuts come back with the drawing. The recovery plan also needs templates, issued sets, central-model backup folders and the administrative access needed to reach them. The visible project folder is not proof that you have the whole project.

We keep backups isolated from what they protect and test restores. An isolated recovery copy can keep ransomware from taking the backup with the working files.

Keep the record you may need years from now

Texas architecture rule 1.103(c) makes the sealing architect responsible for keeping each sealed construction or prototypical construction document for at least ten years from its signature date. Keep the sealed, signed and dated original, or a copy with the seal, signature and date clearly visible and legible.

Your firm identifies what it must retain. We can build and test the technical recovery plan around that decision. A backup you cannot open later will not answer the question that brought you back to the project.

Ask one question before the next deadline

Ask us anything. One IT question, answered straight, no charge and no pitch.

If the central model stopped synchronizing tonight, what would you restore, and how long would it take? Send us that.

Do you already have someone doing your IT? Ask anyway. If they have it handled, that is what you will hear.

Call (817) 265-5000 or email info@bdunn.com.