Engineering & architecture IT

Managed IT for engineering and architecture firms

SOC 2 Type II attested MSP that understands large CAD models, Revit central files, and the workstations that open them. Managed IT built for firms where a slow file server costs a billable hour a day.

15 min
Critical response SLA
SOC 2
Type II attested
10 GbE
CAD file server tuning
GPU
Remote workstations

Built for the way engineers and architects work

Engineering and architecture firms live inside Revit, AutoCAD, MicroStation, ArchiCAD, and SolidWorks. Files are large, workstations are expensive, and a corrupted central model can lose a week of work. Here is what NFD does specifically for design firms.

CAD and BIM file server tuning
10 GbE storage backend, SMB Multichannel, opportunistic locking tuned for Revit central files, quarterly detach-and-recompact routine.
GPU remote workstations
NVIDIA RTX-backed cloud workstations for staff working from home, site trailers, or client offices. Full Revit performance over a browser or Windows client.
Autodesk, Bentley, Bluebeam licensing
Named-user license management, single sign-on into your Microsoft 365 tenant, deployment and version pinning per project team.
Immutable backups of models
Hourly snapshots of the file server and daily off-site immutable backups. When a central model corrupts, we roll back to the last hour, not last night.
SOC 2 Type II attested MSP
Increasingly a requirement for public-sector, institutional, and pharma-client work. Bridge letter available without NDA; full report under NDA.
On-site presence in Southern Ontario
Six offices - Toronto, Markham, Kitchener, Mississauga, Pickering, Montreal - so a workstation swap is same-day, not next-week ship-and-hope.

Services included in a standard engineering-firm engagement

  • 24/7 staffed helpdesk. Toronto-based engineers, 15-minute critical response, escalation into workstation-level and CAD-application-level expertise.
  • Managed Microsoft 365. Email, Teams, SharePoint for project delivery, retention policies for the seven-year professional-liability record requirement.
  • Managed cybersecurity. Managed EDR on every workstation, managed email security, MFA, quarterly phishing simulations, dark-web credential monitoring.
  • Backup and disaster recovery. Immutable Canadian backups of file server, project databases, and Microsoft 365. Full-firm recovery time objective under 4 hours.
  • Application and workstation support. Autodesk (Revit, AutoCAD, Civil 3D, Inventor), Bentley (MicroStation, OpenRoads), Bluebeam Revu, SolidWorks, ArchiCAD, Rhino, SketchUp.
  • vCIO strategy. Quarterly reviews of workstation-refresh cycle, storage growth, license optimization, insurance/liability alignment.

FAQ for principals and IT leads

Have you worked with Revit central files at scale?

Yes. We support firms with 200 GB+ project libraries, up to 40 concurrent Revit users, and multi-office central-file access via BIM 360 / Autodesk Docs.

Do you provide remote workstations, or do we buy the hardware?

Either. We deploy physical workstations (Dell Precision, Lenovo ThinkStation) on a lifecycle schedule, or GPU-backed cloud workstations (AWS G4dn, Azure NVv4) billed monthly. Most firms mix both.

Can you help pass a client cybersecurity questionnaire?

Yes. Public-sector and institutional client questionnaires are standardized enough that we keep pre-filled answers on file and adapt them for each RFP.

What about site trailers with limited internet?

We deploy managed LTE routers, an on-site file cache, and offline-capable Bluebeam for site staff. Sync happens when a good connection is available.

Will we have named engineers on our account?

Yes. Two to four named engineers per account with documented rotation. Your project managers know their names. No ticket-lottery routing.

Ready to run engineering IT without the friction

Book a 20-minute scoping call. Written proposal within five business days, references and SOC 2 bridge letter on request.