Connecting Construction: PlanHub Projects

Background

Cloud Based Plan Room Application

PlanHub is a cloud-based software application for the construction and construction services industry. The application allows general contractors to seamlessly share project files and information with subcontractors and vendors along with project tracking and bid management tools.

Containing a bid management platform for the construction industry, PlanHub helps drive efficiency for the bid management processes for general contracts. Once bids are completed, companies can share and exchange important information such as blueprints, plans and project files. The platform also facilitates job opportunities for subcontractors.

Additional features for subcontractor members include access to local commercial construction projects available for bid based on a users’ geography. Opportunities are hosted on a virtual project board tied to a user’s geography. Planhub’s business model is proven, with members having already been awarded millions of dollars in contracts through its network.

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Our Strategy

How we work

Create

Our designers and architects work with you to define every feature, screen, and user flow

Sprint

Receive product builds every two-weeks as we add features

Learn

We analyze user feedback to help you prioritize new features

Problems

The client had a concept for a web platform that would more efficiently connect general contractors, subcontractors and suppliers but had no full stack software engineering resources in house. The concept started as a one-line idea, and Zibtek was tasked with creating a market-ready product.
The client needed a team to provide end to end design, development, and support engineering solutions.
Pre-selling of the service led to considerable market interest. The web application needed to accommodate thousands of concurrent users making server and application scalability a top priority.
Data storage integrity and considerable cloud data storage capacity was also an important part of the tool. Users need to upload and share large data files across the globe with different teams.
The site needed to have high performance data storage options to allow users to upload critical information from anywhere.

Solution

Zibtek was retained as Planhub’s custom software developer to provide engineering services for the development of the concept.
As the application needed to be developed from the ground up, we set out to make the structure as flexible as possible. The front end was built decoupled from the backend or business logic. API’s were structured in a way to be consumable by outside parties if needed.
We used Angular 2+ as the frontend and PHP5 with Laravel 5.3+ as server-side technology.
Since the design of this application required the product to be cloud-enabled, we used Amazon AWS for storage and hosting .We also used cloud infrastructures like AWS RDS for database storage and AWS S3 for file storage as it presented the best of available options at the time.
We evaluated and selected a reputable content delivery network (CDN) provider to ensure high resource availability wherever users logged in.

Result

Launch of the new Planhub platform was met with tremendous success.
The client launched the platform ahead of schedule and was able to rapidly add thousands of clients.
PlanHub has experienced over 189% in revenue growth over the last two years and operates in nearly every state.
More than 90% of active members renew their membership each month and more than 75% are awarded work within their first three months of membership.