IT has always been important for construction companies, but it’s always felt peripheral to the actual work being done on site. It may be used plenty in the office, and in the design of the building. But when it comes to the actual construction process, paper and personal judgement always seem to take precedence.
Recent years have changed that picture dramatically. Not only have the capabilities of computing changed, but so have the requirements for transparency and communication throughout the building process. The Golden Thread in particular now means that robust construction IT infrastructure is pivotal to help firms track progress, record key decisions, and share information between contractors and stakeholders.
Pulling on the Golden Thread
The introduction of the Golden Thread is arguably one of the biggest changes to construction record keeping in decades. Developed in response to the Grenfell Tower tragedy, and embedded within the Building Safety Act, the Golden Thread aims to address a key issue found by the enquiry: that failures of communication and an abdication of responsibility by contractors, the council, and the property management company all contributed to the disaster.
While plenty of blame was apportioned to the manufacturers of the cladding and window panels, insulation, and cavity barriers used on Grenfell Tower, there were also numerous failures by different parties to interrogate the information provided by these companies, acknowledge the concerns of residents, or assume responsibility for the issues. The Golden Thread aims to fix this by ensuring that all information about a building is accurate, accessible, up-to-date, and maintained throughout its entire lifecycle.
This is where IT comes in. Everyone involved in a project now needs to be confident that the information they’re using is current, and that all changes are recorded properly. Everything from design amendments, to material specifications, to inspection records, maintenance guidance, and compliance documents all needs to be available when required—something that can only be achieved with digital record-keeping.
The growing role of data in construction
Every construction project has always generated an enormous amount of information, even if you wouldn’t typically think of it as data. Architectural drawings evolve throughout the design phase, while surveyors update cost estimates, and site managers record inspections, deliveries, and progress. Health and safety teams complete risk assessments, and contractors and subcontractors produce certificates and test results. Even usage data is increasingly being collected by sensors to optimise things like building maintenance.
All of this information is part of the lifecycle of a building, but it used to be more abstract. You could find it when needed, but it would be divided up between contractors, and kept on personal devices. Changes wouldn’t always be logged properly, and updates might be sparse. All of this makes it much harder to establish a reliable version of the truth. These small errors and gaps in data could make it hard to establish the facts beyond doubt if something went wrong further down the line.
The idea of the Golden Thread is to ensure this is all documented and centralised from the word go. Using a secure, cloud-based document storage system, each step and decision in the course of a project is logged to the same repository. User management ensures that every contribution is logged and timestamped, and that multiple people can access and modify a document at the same time, without one person’s contributions overwriting another.
The complexity of IT for construction
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this isn’t just something that you can find a bit of software to do for you. The kind of file management system needed to meet the required standards under law requires robust IT infrastructure. You need a server that’s either locally managed, or managed from elsewhere within the UK or Europe to meet your GDPR requirements. You also need to make sure that access from different devices is secure, with properly managed user control, ensuring access is limited to only the people who need it.
You also need the system to support simultaneous access from different devices and locations. People need to be able to access and upload files directly from a site on a phone or tablet, as well as from different office locations. This might require the creation or configuration of apps and devices, and sufficient bandwidth and storage to support the upload of large files like raw images, videos, and CAD files.
Cybersecurity is also something construction firms need to take increasingly seriously. The advent of generative AI has made it easier to conduct scams and phishing attacks that seek to gain access to your systems, meaning that cyber criminals no longer just target the biggest businesses. Cybersecurity training, certification, and active monitoring are all required to ensure your systems remain secure, and that documents are properly backed up and protected against unauthorised access.
The broader benefits of great IT
While there’s an obvious compliance angle to be aware of, the introduction of more IT into construction isn’t just a box-ticking exercise. Reducing the amount of work that’s done on pen and paper or local files has other benefits. Version control and security are two of those, but there are also benefits for productivity. Having files in an accessible and searchable repository means they’re quicker to find, stopping you from having to dig through emails or find the latest version of a document.
Technology is also bringing new benefits to construction. From online and VR site safety training, to site safety monitoring systems, to advanced inventory management systems and even automated vehicles, new technologies are allowing for closer monitoring and remote management of sites and resources. All of this needs to be underpinned by effective and efficient IT infrastructure, preventing downtime and ensuring consistent performance across locations.
There’s also the simple but persistent barrier that is communication between different contractors, suppliers, and other parties on a project. Communication and collaboration software can ensure that all communications between stakeholders are centralised and tracked the same as your files are. This helps to make communication easier, avoid
How to improve your construction IT
None of this is straightforward to achieve, particularly alone. Ideally you want all of the elements above to work in concert with one another. That might mean not just deploying a file management system, but also managing things like cybersecurity, backup and recovery, software updates and devices, communication tools, and inventory and logistics.
It’s very easy to fall into a scenario where each of these is fulfilled by an individual bit of software bolted onto your business. This not only means you’re juggling multiple subscriptions to cloud software, but that no single piece of software works in harmony with the others unless it’s easily configured to do so. This can lead to data being siloed and lost in the same way as might already be happening with emails or personal devices.
This is where an experienced IT managed service provider (MSP) comes in. An IT MSP with experience working with construction firms will not only be able to recommend the best software for your budget and use case, but also bring the expertise needed to centralise your data as much as possible. They will work with you to provide tools and configure and maintain hardware that supports your work and meets regulatory requirements in as streamlined a way as possible.
They can also help to limit both your costs and your exposure to risk. Most MSPs will allow you to scale up or down your investment as required, supporting your business as it scales, and reducing investment in fallow periods between projects. This also allows you to dip into trials of certain software or even hardware to support things like AI automation, ensuring you remain competitive and agile without overexposing yourself by investing in costly hardware or long-term software subscriptions.
Building foundations for the future
Corny as it might be, the foundations of a building are now as much of a digital construction as a physical one. It helps to think of each project as having both a physical and a digital version, with each change to the physical project needing to be reflected in kind in digital form. This record of the building’s lifecycle not only helps to support and accelerate the construction process, but also the safety of the building, and its future maintenance and upkeep.
The Golden Thread has accelerated a transformation that was already underway, and brought plenty of benefits in terms of safety and transparency. At the same time, both it and other advances in cloud computing, collaboration, and mobile technology have made robust IT infrastructure a necessity where it might previously have been an afterthought.
This is a difficult transition, but it’s not one that businesses have to navigate alone. Working with the right IT MSP can help you to not only achieve compliance with the Building Safety Act, but also improve collaboration, reduce mistakes, make retrieving files easier, and even empower new AI tools—all helping you to work safer, smarter, and more efficiently than ever before.
This article was written by Ben Smoker, Chief Executive Officer of Sota, one of the UK’s leading independent managed service providers and a ranked member of the Global MSP 501.
Ben is focused on aligning technology strategy with measurable business outcomes, enabling clients to scale securely, modernise with confidence, and compete effectively in an increasingly complex digital landscape shaped by multi‑cloud, cyber resilience, and agentic AI.
