Construction, engineering and property
Information flow, and the liability that follows it.
Every project director knows the moment. A variation is disputed, and the answer depends on which revision was current when the instruction was issued, whether the transmittal went out, and who acknowledged it. The drawing exists. The proof does not.
Twenty years in and around Hong Kong and Macau contracting, as the senior technology and information head a construction business rarely has in-house. Strategic IT and systems reviews, project environments, document control and AI — the work that decides whether a claim, an audit or a programme holds up, and the work a local IT firm is not built to do.
The eight you will recognise immediately
If more than three of these are true, the problem is structural rather than a discipline issue with your team.
- Superseded drawings still in circulation. Somebody built to Rev C last week. Rev D was issued a fortnight ago. Nobody can prove who had what
- Verbal site instructions. Confirmed by message, sitting on a foreman's personal phone, and gone when he changes jobs
- Variations tracked in one QS's spreadsheet. He is on another job by the time the claim matters, and the file is on his desktop
- Submittal turnaround nobody can evidence. You are certain the consultant sat on it for three weeks. Certain is not the same as demonstrable
- Site photographs in a camera roll. The best contemporaneous evidence anybody has, undated against any job reference and unusable in a claim
- Files too big to move. Models and point clouds zipped, split, couriered on a drive, or crawling over a VPN while the programme waits
- Consultants and subcontractors emailing attachments. A dozen external parties who do not work for you, each with their own version of the truth
- Handover packs assembled in a panic. Three people pulled off live work for a fortnight to compile what should have accumulated as you went
The common thread is that the record is a by-product of the work rather than the work itself. That is fine right up until the moment somebody with a lawyer asks you to produce it.
What it costs you, in the order it hurts
- Claims you should win and do not — because entitlement you genuinely had could not be evidenced on the adjudication timetable
- Variations never converted — instructions issued, work done, and nobody able to say how much money is sitting in the gap. This is usually the largest single number on the page
- Rework — built to a superseded revision, and the cost falls on you regardless of whose fault the issue was
- Retention released late — because the O&M and as-built record was incomplete at handover
- Professional indemnity exposure — a design decision you cannot demonstrate you flagged
- Prequalification failures — larger clients and government work increasingly ask how you control project information, and the answer is scored
Who I work with
Main contractors and fit-out
Site and office on one current set. Instructions, submittals, variations and transmittals registered rather than remembered, and a claim position you can evidence on demand.
Architecture practices
Design files too big to email and too slow over a VPN. Clients and consultants who need the current set without you creating accounts for them. And an issue record that matters as much as the drawing.
Engineering consultancies
Multi-discipline coordination, models that change daily, and a QA obligation with an auditor at the end of it. I have written and updated quality management procedures for international engineering firms in Hong Kong as well as building the systems underneath them.
Developers, owners and operators
Handover packs that are genuinely complete, and asset and compliance records still findable a decade after the contractor has gone.
Where I come in
The senior work your IT support cannot do.
A local IT firm keeps the servers up and the laptops working, and a reseller can sell you a licence. What they are not built to do is sit where technology, information and commercial risk meet on a construction business — which is exactly where the expensive problems live. That is the work I am brought in for.
Strategic review of your IT and information systems
An independent, senior look at how information actually moves through your business and your projects: what you run, what it costs, where it fails, and what a firm your size should do next. A review an owner or a board can act on, not a pitch for more kit.
Project technology and information services
Standing up and running the technology and document environment for a specific project or programme — the common data environment, the registers, the external parties, the controls — so a major job is built on a record that holds from day one rather than assembled in a panic at handover.
Document and information management, done properly
Not folders and a naming convention. The information architecture underneath: how drawings, submittals, instructions, variations and commercial data are controlled, who can touch what, and how it stands up when a client, an auditor or an adjudicator asks. Aligned to ISO 19650 and 9001 thinking without drowning you in it.
AI applied to the actual work
Tender and bid checking, bulk document and submittal review, and questions answered from your own project record — the volume work no team has the hours to do by hand. On one tender this identified HK$1.5m of potential costs to be avoided.
This is CIO-level and information-manager-level capability, brought in for a project or a review rather than carried as a full-time salary — the senior head a mid-market contractor or consultancy would not otherwise have.
What Egnyte gives an AEC business
These are Egnyte’s own AEC capabilities, in plain terms.
- Mapped letter drives in the cloud — the M: drive your people already understand, without the file server in the cupboard. This single feature is why AEC adoption succeeds where other platforms fail: nobody has to change how they work
- Large file collaboration — desktop-speed performance on very large models without a VPN, including for people working from site or at home
- Ransomware detection — monitoring, alerts and recovery tools, with rollback to a point before the damage
- Insider risk management — unusual file activity flagged. Relevant when a project team turns over, or somebody leaves for a competitor mid-job
- Role-based access with full audit trails — who saw what, when, and who changed it
- AI Search, AI Assistant and AI Workflows — natural-language questions across the whole project record, and approvals that run off the record itself
- Golden Thread and compliance support — Egnyte builds explicitly for building-safety information obligations and for CMMC where it applies
It works with the tools you already run
This is the question every AEC firm asks second, and it is the right question. Replacing the design stack is not on the table.
Egnyte integrates with Autodesk — Revit, AutoCAD, Civil 3D and Forma — along with Procore, Bluebeam, Bentley MicroStation, Newforma, Rhino and InDesign. It sits alongside Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace rather than replacing them.
Egnyte also publishes AEC-specific add-ons — a special file handler for the formats that break ordinary sync, and project controls for the way project folders actually need to behave.
Which of these matter to you is a five-minute conversation. Which of them you are already paying for and not using is usually a longer one.
What I add
The platform is half of it.
A licence does not produce a record. What produces a record is structure, enforced controls, and registers that are the system of truth rather than a summary of it.
- Folder architecture and permissions by group, with controls set at folder level so the rules are enforced rather than asked for
- The registers a job actually runs on, living in the platform rather than in one QS’s spreadsheet that leaves when they do
- A director’s view that surfaces the money quietly at risk — the exposure a monthly report should show you and usually does not
- Commercial data in a separate register with its own access — procurement lead times, payment claim dates, retention
- A single exchange folder for consultants and suppliers, with expiring recipient-only links and upload links back, so nothing critical arrives as an email attachment
- Site capture — photographs and site records going straight into the job folder from a phone, dated against the job, rather than into a chat thread
- AI tender and submittal checking on top, where the volume justifies it
Why Hong Kong and Macau make this urgent
Security of Payment Ordinance (Cap. 652), in force since 28 August 2025. Adjudication runs to a short timetable and is entirely documentary. A claiming party has 28 days to start adjudication and an adjudicator is appointed within seven working days of the notice. Slow retrieval is now a cash problem rather than only a compliance one.
ISO 9001 clause 7.5 — documented information. Not something that can be tidied up in the fortnight before an audit.
Macau gaming and hospitality carries a documentary burden most sectors never see. The record has to satisfy regulators, the operator and a main contractor running dozens of packages at once.
Track record
I have done this job, not just sold the licence.
The Venetian Macao
A stalled document and compliance system on the resort development, working through Hsin Chong Engineering (Macau). Taken from stalled to delivered in three months, on one of the largest hospitality and gaming builds in the region.
Yearfull Group — twenty years with a Hong Kong contractor
Kept on for two decades as the senior technology head a firm this size would not otherwise have. The document side of it: a cloud file platform linking Hong Kong, Singapore and major project sites, so drawings, submittals and approvals moved between offices, clients and consultants without anybody emailing a file — and a controlled project environment for the large jobs.
Alongside that, a secure subcontractor payment control system built from scratch, server, network and firewall upgrades delivered with zero downtime around live projects, IT running costs down 40%, and an AI tender-checking system that identified HK$1.5m of potential costs to be avoided on a single bid.
Quality management for engineering consultancies
Quality management procedures and IT governance frameworks for international engineering consultancies in Hong Kong — the documented side of the same problem, written to survive an audit.
Beyond AEC
Secure data rooms for capital and advisory firms, including Terramillem Capital and Turnaround Asia Advisors. Different audience, identical discipline: complete, current, and producible to a third party at short notice without anybody getting more access than they need.
How an engagement runs
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Review — two weeks
How drawings and revisions are issued and superseded, whether instructions and submittals are registered and what the turnaround actually is, who can see and change what, where records sit outside the controlled system, and what would happen if the whole record had to be produced at short notice. Ends in a findings report and a costed plan.
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Build — approximately ten weeks
Structure, permissions, registers, dashboard, exchange folder, integrations and site capture. Migrated from wherever it lives now.
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Adoption
The part that decides whether any of it survives. Training by role — site, QS, document controller, director — because they each need a different ten minutes.
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Then I get out of the way
You own the platform and the structure. Ongoing care is available and optional, not a condition of the build.
Scoped, priced and agreed in writing before anything starts. Licences and platform subscriptions are quoted separately and transparently — you always see what is fee and what is licence.
Running an AEC business on a file server and a spreadsheet?
A quick call is enough to tell you whether this is a licence problem, a structure problem, or neither.