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Platform Suite
Manufacturing & ConstructionTransforming Construction Project Management with AntStack’s Serverless Platform for Channel Rock
About Platform Suite
Channel Rock Technologies was founded with the vision to help architecture professionals navigate the challenges of working in the construction and design industry. They recognize that there are many problems associated with the current construction workflow, and they want their products to solve those issues for clients.
The company’s philosophy is to persevere and break through the core of a problem in order to get to its solution. They believe that innovation comes out of collaborative solutions designed by architects, for architects
The Challenge
One of the main challenges the company faced was managing documents and communication. Architecture projects and Construction undertakings have a life span of multiple years, often stretching beyond the completion date due to myriad physical and management variables.
As plans and documentation are bounced back and forth between parties, there is a long chain of transmission with many edits and revisions. This process can be chaotic and onerous without using an online workspace management system.
Previously, the client was manually managing important documents and discussion threads through google sheets and docs. This made it difficult to control users’ access to files and data in a particular workspace and repetitive and redundant jobs. Additionally, the circulation of minutes of meetings (MOM) involved human intervention and was prone to errors.
In order to overcome these challenges, the company needed to implement an online workspace management system to streamline document sharing, instant messaging, and workspace authentication using AWS serverless frameworks.
Our Goals
The need was pressing to build an efficient task management tool to make life in the construction business more effortless and structured via automation and cloud storage.
AntStack decided to go serverless with Amazon Lambda implementation and use AWS’s cloud infrastructure as a backbone to support rapid scale-up and cost management in the future. The result is Platform Suite - a dynamic on-cloud application designed to befit the needs of design and construction professionals.
Here’s what we achieved with Platform-suite:
- Integration of a real-time chat and payment gateway.
- Authorization and authentication for improved security.
- Register functionality - both static and dynamic - for file upload and discussion threads.
- Dedicated file storage system for future growth.
Our Impact
Customizable Workspace and User Assignment.
The application is built in ReactJS and deployed on AWS’s CloudFront through Amplify, while the backend was developed using Typescript.
This eased managing SSL certificates and provided automatic checks for cache invalidation. Workspace creation and management came as the biggest time-saver for the company, as it bundled different operations and features together with access control and reliability.
Scalable and Secure Data Storage.
AWS’s S3 is used for file storage, while DynamoDB stores user and project information at the backend. DynamoDB is a NoSQL database that uses hashing to log key-value pairs to enable quick access.
Real-time Messaging and Notifications.
AWS Simple Notification Service (SNS) is used to deploy instant messaging, which can be sent as an SMS text message or email. SNS delivers notifications in mass broadcast at minimal cost and with a single API call.
Seamless Document Sharing.
Actionable items like Minutes of Meetings (MOM) and crucial data is available to authenticated users via the serverless Vendia Share service in real time.
Enhancing Data Security.
The client’s existing authentication procedure was manual, requiring an administrator to function as a secure bridge.
AntStack’s implementation of AWS Cognito from Amplify framework for user registration and authentication improves security and streamlines the process. With OAuth 2.0 authorization built-in, manual procedures and the need for a separate secure bridge administrator are eliminated, saving time and resources.
A Smooth Payment Gateway.
The client used no exclusive payment gateway to process monetary transactions.
AntStack deployed Stripe as the payment gateway solution for its ease of use and integration with AWS.
AWS Codebuild is used to automate new code delivery and deployment using CI/CD. It complies, tests, and builds an executable to run fresh code. The different components of the application communicate using AWS SQS, and the API Gateway is used as Rest API to exchange information from the backend.
A startup within the organisation
AntStack successfully fulfilled Channel Rock Technologies’ requirements and enhanced the workflow specific to the construction industry. The enterprise stands beyond satisfied with the delivery and plans to take the application live within a month for extensive testing and market-wide adoption.
In the future, Channel Rock Technologies plans to implement additional services like reporting, time-sheet management, invoicing, and sample collection tracking into their product. These features are currently in the pipeline with AntStack as their partner and will be implemented during the next development phase.
Results that speak volumes
With AntStack’s serverless approach, clients no longer need to worry about managing and provisioning infrastructure - it’s taken care of for them, completely abstracted away from the user.
- Utilizing AntStacks serverless framework for cost-effective and easy scalability, Channel Rock achieved a 70% increase in project visibility.
- Vendia streamlines document sharing resulting in a time reduction of over 80% in the approval process.
- Users are given their own authenticated workspace, saving time and reducing administrative efforts.
- The system maintains a complete project history, including revisions and edit details of documents shared.
- External collaborators can be easily invited to the project, and tasks/jobs are easily tracked for billing purposes.
In their words
John Matz
Founder
In their words
John Matz
Founder
