An EnviroShield Insulation team member in a branded shirt at the EduCom IT Albury service counter, talking with an EduCom IT technician.
Case study · Trade & construction · Albury–Wodonga

It started with
a broken iPad.

Mick came into our Albury store with a liquid-damaged iPad. The conversation that followed was about something much bigger — an insulation business growing faster than the calendar holding it together. Three steps later, EnviroShield quote, schedule, document, complete and invoice every job from one login.

The business

Growing faster than the calendar holding it together.

EnviroShield Insulation supply and install roof, wall, underfloor and acoustic insulation across Albury, Wodonga and the surrounding border region. The work is scheduled, physical and compliance-heavy, and there was more of it every month.

The business ran on Google Workspace, and the projects lived in Google Calendar. That works right up until it doesn't. A calendar entry is a time and a place — it cannot hold a stage, a quote, a purchase order, a set of site photos or a sign-off.

Nobody could answer "where is this job up to?" without ringing someone. Files were spread across personal drives, email attachments and phones. SWMS and compliance certificates were produced away from the jobs they belonged to. And every additional job made all of it worse — which is the hardest kind of bottleneck, because the growth is what creates it.

Fix where the work lives.
Then build the thing that manages it.

The plan

Three steps, and the order mattered.

We ran discovery sessions before anything was quoted or built. Plenty of digital projects fail because the interesting part gets built on foundations nobody fixed first.

00

It started at the counter.

An iPad with liquid damage is ordinary work for us — we are an Apple Authorised Service Provider, and it is one of the most common things to cross the bench at our Albury store. What was not ordinary was the conversation that happened while we looked at it.

02

A project system built around the way they work.

We did not hand EnviroShield a product and ask them to change to suit it. We started from the workflow they already had — quote, purchase order received, scheduled, installed, inspected, invoiced — and designed to it. The stages are their stages. The labels are their words: Call-Ups, Uplift, Wall Wrap. Then we kept refining it in place while the team used it on real jobs.

03

Virtual Assistance.

A better system does not do the admin; it just makes the admin visible. So the third step was people. We onboarded our Virtual Assistance team into EnviroShield, working inside the same Microsoft 365 tenant and the same project system as their own staff — which made the handover short, because they were already looking at the same screens.

Services used

Nothing invented for EnviroShield.
Assembled in their order.

These are the same services we deliver for every business — each one is a page you can read, and the order they were delivered in is the whole point.

01

Microsoft 365

Tenant setup, licensing, identity, Teams and SharePoint — the foundation step one delivered.

One place for the files and one identity per person, because the project system stores its documents in SharePoint and authenticates against the tenant.Microsoft 365
02

Digital business projects

Scoping, building and refining the systems a business actually runs on — including custom ones.

Discovery sessions before anything was quoted, then a build that kept changing in place while the team used it on real jobs.Digital projects
03

Virtual Assistance

An admin team onboarded into your own systems, sized to the hours you actually need.

Our VA team works inside EnviroShield's tenant and project system, so there is no shuttling of spreadsheets and no second copy of the truth.Virtual Assistance
04

Migrations

Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 with BitTitan MigrationWiz — 20+ tenants and counting.

Mail, calendars, contacts and documents moved across with a cutover plan, then backup over the top because a migration is exactly when you want one.Migration partner
05

Website & web systems

Browser-based tools built to a brief, hosted properly, and maintained after they go live.

The project system runs at their own address, so it is an iPad on the counter, a phone on a roof and a laptop in the office without anyone installing anything.Web development
06

Apple repairs

Where this one actually began. Apple Authorised warranty, AppleCare+ and out-of-warranty repairs.

A liquid-damaged iPad brought Mick to the counter. The conversation while we looked at it turned into everything above.Apple repairs
The EnviroShield Insulation project portal open on an iPad, showing the dashboard with pipeline stages, jobs awaiting scheduling and upcoming call-ups.
The system

One record per job. One place to look.

It runs in a browser at their own address, so it is an iPad on the counter, a phone on a roof and a laptop in the office without anyone installing anything. That is the same discipline we bring to everything we build for the web — and it is the kind of digital project that pays for itself because it removes work rather than adding a system to maintain.

The first version was not the last one. We refined it session by session while the team used it on real jobs, until it fitted the business rather than approximately resembling it. It still changes as they do.

Scheduled call-up details in the screenshot are blurred — they are a customer's, not ours to publish.

What is wired into it

Built to sit inside their business, not beside it.

Every integration here exists to stop a second copy of the truth appearing. Finance stays where the accountant already works. Documents stay in the client's own tenant. The compliance paperwork stays attached to the job it covers.

  • XeroInvoicing stays where their accountant already works — fed from the project record rather than duplicated in a second ledger.
  • SharePointEvery file the system touches stays inside their own Microsoft 365 tenant and is reachable from Teams.
  • ComplianceSWMS and certificates generated against the job they belong to, so the paperwork and the project stop being two separate filing problems.
  • SchedulingPipeline, scheduling and call-ups in one view, so "where is this up to?" is a glance rather than a phone call.
  • Job costingMaterials, labour and people tracked against the job, which is what makes the finance numbers mean anything.
Two members of the EnviroShield Insulation team with an EduCom IT staff member outside the EduCom IT store on Dean Street, Albury.
Two local businesses on the same border region. It started over the counter.
The outcome

What changed.

  • Every project has one record, one status and one set of files — not a calendar entry and a memory.
  • The state of the pipeline is a screen, not a round of phone calls.
  • Compliance paperwork is produced from the job, so it is complete and it is findable.
  • Invoicing flows into Xero from the same record the work was scheduled against.
  • Admin that used to sit on the owner is handled by the VA team, in the same systems.
  • The system keeps changing as the business does. It was designed to be refined, and it still is.

The point of the three steps was never the software. It was to give Mick back the hours going into chasing the state of the business, and to make growth stop being the thing that broke it.

Reference

The stack.

Platform
Microsoft 365 — identity, mail, licensing
Collaboration
Microsoft Teams — conversations, meetings, channels per project area
Files
SharePoint — one organisation-wide document store, reachable from Teams
Migration
Google Workspace → Microsoft 365 via BitTitan MigrationWiz
Project system
Custom build — pipeline, scheduling, field, materials, labour, QA and compliance
Finance
Xero, fed from the project record rather than re-keyed
Compliance
SWMS and certificates generated against the job
People
EduCom IT Virtual Assistance — onboarded into the client's own tenant
Security
Multi-factor authentication and tenant backup
Delivered from
EduCom IT Albury — 580 Dean Street, Albury NSW
FAQ

Frequently asked questions.

Can you build a custom project management system for a trade business?

Yes. EnviroShield's system was designed around their existing workflow rather than the other way round — their stages, their language, their paperwork. We start by mapping how the business actually runs today, build to that, then keep refining it while it is in real use. It runs in a browser, so it works on an iPad at the counter, a phone on site and a laptop in the office.

Do we have to leave Google Workspace to work with EduCom IT?

No. We support Google Workspace as well as Microsoft 365, and plenty of our clients stay where they are. EnviroShield moved because the rest of the plan depended on it — file storage, identity and the project system's document handling all sit on SharePoint. If that is not your situation, the move is not mandatory.

Does the project system integrate with Xero?

Yes. Invoicing stays in Xero, where EnviroShield's accountant already works, and the project system feeds it rather than duplicating it. The same principle applies to files: they live in SharePoint inside the Microsoft 365 tenant, not in a separate silo owned by the software.

Can the system produce SWMS and compliance certificates?

Yes. EnviroShield's build includes a SWMS and certificates section, generated against the job they belong to, so the compliance paperwork and the project it covers stay together instead of drifting apart in separate folders.

What does Virtual Assistance actually do in a business like this?

The admin work that sits outside the core workflow — quoting follow-ups, supplier and customer correspondence, scheduling changes, data entry and document handling. Our Virtual Assistance team onboards into the same systems your staff use, so they are working inside your tenant rather than emailing files back and forth.

Do you only work with businesses in Albury–Wodonga?

No. EnviroShield is local to our Albury store, which is how the relationship started, but the same work is delivered remotely across Australia and on site from our Albury, Batemans Bay, Canberra, Coffs Harbour and Smeaton Grange locations.

How does a project like this start?

With a discovery session, not a quote. We sit down and map what the business does today, where the friction is and what it would be worth fixing. EnviroShield's three steps came out of that conversation — and the order mattered as much as the contents.

The point of it all

Is your calendar doing a project system's job?

Tell us how the work moves through your business today. We will map it with you before anyone talks about software.

Start an enquiry →