Personal safety and security are often cited as the number one priority in the construction industry, and rightly so. There are a myriad of ways in which every member of a construction team, from CEO to day laborer, ensure safe practices. But verifying that a worker is trained and qualified for a given job is one of the most basic elements to running a safe construction site. Even here, new cloud-based technologies are becoming available to assist in this vital function.
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GFI Software™ released guidelines for businesses ahead of the end-of-year holiday period, traditionally a time when many office-based businesses close for the festive season, leaving IT departments unmanned and key IT systems at heightened risk of hacking and denial of service attacks, malware infections and unauthorized access.
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Q. We are looking into options for electronic daily reports / construction project management systems. A brief web search has pointed me to systems like Procore, Maxwell, Dexter+Chaney, Sage, Meridian, etc. Before I spend loads of time reading through vague product descriptions, I was hoping to get some feedback from others who have been down this path.

To be specific, for the daily logs, we are looking for something that does more than a paperless or document management system that stores a PDF copy of a form or something of the like. For example, we would like to be able to collect data like timesheet records and export this to our accounting/payroll system for timecards and capture production data in a way that can be queried or used for reports or exported to Excel. To do this, the form would have to be able to be customized to include the fields we need. We are really looking for something that can be heavily customized, not just boiler-plate stuff.

Is anyone using something like this? If so, did you build it internally? Off-the-shelf? Cloud/SaaS? What has your experience been, good or bad?
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Q. Are any of you paying for 4G jobsite camera data services with Verizon Wireless or comparable cameras on metered pricing plans?

The unlimited data plans from the 4G providers appear to be gone and we are looking at options now to include these 4G data services on our monthly cell phone bill.
What I don’t have yet is a good estimate of the monthly GB usage for a field camera (EarthCAM – OxBlue) which is providing both live streaming video and time-lapse high res stills.

I would be interested in your input if you have cameras in the field with 4G cellular modems that you pay per GB.

How many GB do you use per camera on a monthly basis – 50GB, 100GB, 300GB – and what type of cameras are these (video or time-lapse or both).
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Q. Currently we use GFI fax software to handle the reception and storage of faxes not assigned to physical devices. It works well but its only drawback is that it has a card connected to a physical machine that I’m trying to virtualize into Citrix Xenapp.

Does anyone know of a product that I can plug fax lines into that will take the fax and print it to a domain printer and also store in the user's home drive folder, but that doesn’t require a workstation or server?
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