Web Hosting for Engineering Firms

Web hosting for engineering firms means running a document library

Look at what an engineering firm actually publishes and it is mostly files. A capability statement. Project sheets with photographs and a short scope. A line card. Sometimes a standard detail, a specification page, a sample calculation, a copy of a certificate of insurance. Marketing pages sit around those files, but the files are what people come for.

That shapes every hosting decision you will make, and it does it in a way that is different from most trades. A landscaper's site is pages. Yours is pages plus a cabinet, and the cabinet needs somebody who decides what goes in it.

Public, gated, and never

Sort every document into one of three piles before it goes anywhere near a server. Not after.

• Public. Capability statement, service descriptions, project sheets you have written permission to show, staff biographies, registration and certification claims you can stand behind.
• Gated. Material you will send on request. A detailed reference list, a longer past-performance package, anything with a client contact's name and number in it. Gated in practice means email, not a form that instantly hands over a file.
• Never. Client drawings, calculations you were paid to produce, anything under an NDA, anything a client marked confidential, anything with export or security markings on it.

The third pile is the one that matters. Everything else is a preference. That pile is a liability.

Controlled and client-confidential material

Some engineering work carries obligations that follow the document rather than the contract. Defence and aerospace work can be export controlled. A lot of civil and industrial work is covered by a confidentiality clause the client's lawyer wrote. Utility, transit and water projects often involve site information that nobody wants in public for reasons that have nothing to do with competition.

We are not going to tell you which rule applies to which drawing. That is a question for your own counsel and your compliance officer, and the answer changes by client and by contract. What we can tell you is the practical shape of the problem, because it is the same every time.

• Publishing to a website is publication to the whole world, including anyone outside the country. That is exactly the distinction a lot of control regimes care about.
• A password on a page is not a control regime. It is a speed bump, and it does not create a record of who accessed what.
• Marketing does not always know what is restricted. The person who assembles the project sheets is rarely the person who read the contract.
• A photograph can carry information the drawing did not. Location data in the file, a legible control panel label, a visible address plate.

The safe default for a public marketing site is that no client deliverable goes on it. Show the work in words and in photographs you have cleared. If a client wants to see technical depth, send it to them, and let sending it be a decision somebody makes each time rather than a folder that sits open.

Check with your own adviser before publishing anything you received from a client, and before publishing anything produced under a government contract. Treat that as the rule and treat exceptions as approvals you can point to in writing.

Registration by state and by discipline

Professional registration is a claim, and claims on a website need to be exact. Buyers check them, competitors check them, and boards do occasionally take an interest in how a firm describes itself.

The practical difficulty is that registration is per state, per discipline, and often per firm as well as per individual. A principal registered in New York and Pennsylvania does not make the firm licensed everywhere it has a project photograph. Some states also regulate what a firm may call itself and how it may advertise engineering services.

• Say which states, plainly, and keep the list on one page you can edit rather than scattered through the site.
• Distinguish individual registration from firm authorisation. They are different things and readers who matter know the difference.
• Name the discipline. Civil, structural, mechanical, electrical, environmental. Do not let a nav label imply a discipline nobody at the firm holds.
• Take a state off the list the month a registration lapses, not at the next website review.
• If you are unsure what your board allows you to say, ask them or ask your counsel. Advertising rules for licensed professions vary and we are not the right source for that answer.

The hosting connection here is small but real. A registration list is content you will change several times a year, so it needs to live somewhere you can edit in five minutes without calling anyone. If updating one line on your site currently means emailing a web company and waiting, that is a maintenance problem worth solving, and taking over a website covers what to collect if you are moving that work in-house.

How AldoMedia helps

AldoMedia has built and looked after websites for Western New York businesses since 1999. We are an independent authorised reseller rather than the operator of the underlying platform, which means we set the account up, we help you get the site onto it, and we tell you when the plan you are already paying for is the right one.

For an engineering firm the useful first job is usually an inventory. What is in the upload folders, what is indexed, what should never have gone up, and who at the firm owns the answer from now on. That is an afternoon of work, not a project.

Call 716-771-2536 or tell us what your site runs on. If your current arrangement is fine, that is a perfectly good outcome and we will say so.