Most IT advice assumes everyone sits at a desk. If you run a mechanical, plumbing, electrical, or construction company, that's maybe a third of your team. Everyone else is in a truck or on a job site with a phone or a tablet.
We support a number of contractors, and the same gaps show up again and again. None are complicated. They get missed because nobody is looking at the field side. Here is the checklist we'd walk through with you.
1. Everyone signs in as themselves
A crew tablet with one password that six people know is convenient until one of them leaves, and then you are changing a password six people need.
Check: Does every person have their own login, even on shared devices? If the answer is "the tablet in truck 4 is just logged in as the foreman," fix that first.
2. You can lock or wipe a lost device today
Phones and tablets get lost, dropped, and left in trucks. If one has company email, customer addresses, or job photos on it, you need to be able to lock it or erase it from the office the same day.
Check: If a tablet disappeared this afternoon, who would erase it, and how? If nobody knows, the answer is that you can't.
3. Leaving the company shuts everything off the same day
Turnover is part of the trades. When someone moves on, their email, their app logins, and their access to job files should be turned off that day.
Check: Pull up your list of email accounts. Is anyone on it who no longer works for you? Most companies find at least one, and they are usually still paying for that account every month.
4. A second sign-in step on every account
Field staff approve things from their phones between tasks, which is exactly when a fake "your password expired" message works. A second step, such as a code or an approval tap on the phone, stops most stolen-password attacks.
Check: Is it turned on for every account, including the owner's and the shared ones? One unprotected account is enough.
5. Payment changes get a phone call
The most expensive scam in contracting is a fake email from a "supplier" or "general contractor" with new bank details.
Check: Is there a written rule that any change to payment details is confirmed by calling a number you already had on file, never one from the email? This costs nothing and stops the costliest mistake.
6. Job files are backed up somewhere other than the office
Estimates, drawings, photos, and closeout documents are the business. A server in a closet or a folder on the estimator's laptop is one failed drive away from gone.
Check: When was the last time someone actually restored a file from your backup to prove it works? If nobody remembers, test it this week.
7. You can answer the insurance and bid questions
Commercial and public work increasingly comes with security questions, and so does your cyber insurance renewal. They ask about backups, sign-in security, and how you handle devices.
Check: Could you answer those questions today, truthfully, without guessing? If you have worked through the first six items, mostly yes.
Where to start
If this list feels long, do items 3 and 5 this week. Both are free, and both stop real losses.
How HonIsT Solutions can help
This checklist is the kind of work we set up and then keep an eye on for contractors. We give each person their own login, set up phones and tablets so they can be locked or erased remotely, and turn on second-step sign-in. Each month we compare your list of users and devices against who actually works for you, so nobody keeps access after they leave and you are not paying for accounts nobody uses.
You don't need an IT department for any of this. You need someone who treats the people in the trucks as part of the company.
Book a 15-minute call and we'll walk through how your office and field setup compares.