Construction document management software for UK firms
On a building job, document management means three things: everyone can find the current file, the right people can see it and no one else can, and there is a record of what happened to it. Formal drawing revision control with check-in and check-out is a fourth thing, and it is worth deciding early whether you actually need it, because it separates the market cleanly.
What does document management mean on a building job?
In practice it is drawings, specifications, certificates, warranties, insurance documents, quotes and sign-offs, arriving from several directions and needing to reach different people. The failure is rarely storage. It is that the file exists in three places at slightly different vintages and nobody is sure which is live.
The second failure is access. Some documents are for the client, some are for a subcontractor, some are internal, and a tool that shares at project level forces you to over-share or keep a second set outside the system. The second set always goes stale.
What should you check before choosing one?
The question that decides your shortlist is whether you need formal revision control or simply one reliable current copy. Firms issuing drawings to site under a design responsibility usually need the former. Firms receiving and filing documents usually do not.
- Do you need check-in, check-out and superseded-revision history?
- Can access be set per folder or category, or only per project?
- Can you send a document to someone who will not create a login?
- Is there a record of who uploaded, changed or deleted a file?
- Can you get everything back out, and in what format?
Does Portal Worx do drawing revision control?
No, and it is better you know now. There is no version history on a document, no check-in and check-out, no superseded-revision trail and no markup. Replacing a file replaces it, with the change recorded in the activity trail but the previous version not retained.
If you are issuing drawings under design responsibility and need to prove which revision was current on a given date, this is the wrong tool and you should be looking at a common data environment built for that. Saying so on our own page is cheaper for both of us than finding out in month two.
How does Portal Worx handle documents?
Documents live in categories you create inside a project, and each category carries its own audience, so a client, a collaborator and your own team can be given different slices of the same job. Comment threads and @mentions sit on the document itself, so the discussion stays attached to the thing being discussed.
Practical detail: preview PDFs, images and text in the app with page thumbnails, zoom and search; Office files download rather than render. Up to 500MB per document and 2GB per batch, with direct upload for anything over 10MB. Download a selection or a whole category as a zip. Send any document by magic link to someone who never sets up an account.
The feature people underrate is document reminders: schedule an email nudge against a specific document, once or daily or weekly or monthly, to named people. That is the "chase the signed-off drawing" problem, automated.
What happens when something gets deleted?
Projects, categories, folders and reports go to trash for 30 days and can be restored. Individual documents and images do not: deleting one removes it immediately, so it is worth knowing before someone tidies up.
Everything else is recorded. Uploads, moves, category changes, comments and deletions are written to the project activity trail with the person and the time, kept for a year and filtered per person.
Common questions
- Does Portal Worx keep previous versions of a document?
- No. There is no version history, check-in and check-out, or superseded-revision trail. Replacing a file replaces it, with the change recorded in the activity trail.
- Can different people see different documents on the same job?
- Yes. Each document category carries its own audience, so a client, a collaborator and your own team can be given different slices of the same project.
- How large can a document be?
- Up to 500MB per document and 2GB per batch upload, with direct upload used automatically for files over 10MB.
- Can I chase someone for a document automatically?
- Yes. Document reminders send an email nudge against a specific document, once or on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule, to named people or everyone on the project.
- Is a deleted document recoverable?
- Not individually. Projects, categories, folders and reports have a 30-day trash window, but individual documents and images are removed immediately.
Related
What else Portal Worx does
This page covers one part of it. Portal Worx is a full project workspace: projects holding your documents and site photos, reports with conditional logic and captioned photos that export to a logo-stamped PDF, threaded messaging where being in the thread is what grants access, a year-long activity trail, and AI that catches you up on where a job stands without ever seeing more than you can.
See everything it does, or check the plans. Unlimited users on all of them.
See it on one of your own jobs.
14 days on the Professional plan, no card required. Unlimited users on every plan, so your team, your clients and your collaborators are all included.