Secure Large File Transfer in Construction

Overview

Construction and engineering firms deal with large files on a daily basis and must share these files with various partners, contractors, and clients. CAD drawings, blueprints, contracts, and other files are often too big to send through email and are instead burned to CD or printed out and delivered via overnight courier.

Email system administrators are protective of their primary communications tools, and sending large files as email attachments causes multiple issues – storing the data, clogging or even brining down the server when very large file attachments are sent to many people, managing the lifecycle of the attachments, backing up the attachments in addition to the standard messages, and several other concerns. In addition to this, audit trails and security are usually not available for email systems, so sensitive or confidential data can be easily exposed to unintended recipients.

Value Proposition

Biscom Delivery Server provides a separate pathway to deliver large files to one or multiple recipients efficiently, while providing security and reporting capabilities. Additional management capabilities enable users to specify parameters around the delivery such as scheduling, notification options, and additional security measures.

Users with extremely large files often use the Biscom Delivery Manager – a desktop client – that enables users to drag and drop files from their desktop and create packages to deliver. If the network goes down, or a power failure occurs, BDM can pick up where it left off – and not have to restart all over again. Because BDM runs as a background service, it can continue to run even if the user logs off the system.

Case Study

A nationwide home builder uses BDS to communicate with external vendors, contractors, architects, and clients. From the initial sales pitch, to final build, files are being transferred over the course of several months and to a growing number of recipients. Brochures and sales literature, which then moves to blueprints and 3-D models, and then proposals and contracts, eventually leading to the actual build project, are documents that may not be suitable for email. As projects progress, plan updates, pictures, contract revisions, purchase orders, and supplier agreements are regularly sent back and forth.

This is now handled by BDS and provides the home builders with a way to accomplish the large file transfer needs without clogging their email system. In addition, all transactions are being recorded and they can generate reports to ensure the recipients have downloaded the files they need. The time consuming task of burning CDs, printing out large documents, and sending overnight packages is eliminated.