The Lane Construction Corporation, established in 1890, ranks among America’s premier construction companies. Specializing in heavy civil construction services and products, Lane operates across the transportation, infrastructure, and energy sectors with a workforce of over 4,600 employees in 22 locations.

Challenge

Lane Construction faced significant challenges with their project management systems:

  • Lack of external access to project documents stored on internal file shares.
  • Inconsistent filing systems across different office locations, creating confusion for staff moving between offices.
  • Project pursuits tracked in Excel, lacking efficient overview and status updates.
  • Absence of a universal system for tracking project schedules, tasks, issues, or team members.

What We Did

To address these challenges, we undertook extensive infrastructure development including:

  • Installation of an on-prem SharePoint 2013 development farm, a cloud-based three-tier production farm, and migration of initial on-prem data to the cloud, integrating extensive SQL optimization and synchronization.
  • Creation of a standardized project management template encompassing tasks, scheduling, risks, issues, and content management with customized permissions.
  • Implementation of a unified document taxonomy and file plan numbering system across all offices.
  • Installation of a 3-Tier SharePoint Farm, setup of Form-Based Authentication (FBA), SSL, and an extranet using SQL for user authentication.
  • Design and installation of a comprehensive taxonomy with metadata in a content hub, alongside custom event handlers for process automation and custom PowerShell scripting for auto site provisioning and security setups.
  • Development of a data aggregation system using SharePoint 2013 Search to provide project managers with dashboard views of projects, tasks, and documents.
  • Customization of search capabilities with terms refinement panels for straightforward search result filtering.

The Result

The project culminated in a robust IT project management process and an electronic storage framework that delivered:

  • Consistency across all projects and enhanced security for confidential information.
  • Capabilities for document sharing and management with external business partners.
  • A centralized contact management solution with a master company list used throughout the site.
  • Custom search scopes and refiners to streamline finding and tracking agreements.
  • Standardized project templates facilitating one-click project and proposal site creation, coupled with scripted permissions and default data to refine search and management processes.

This transformative approach not only streamlined internal operations but also enhanced project oversight and data accessibility across The Lane Construction Corporation’s extensive network.