The office behind the job site: payment verification, project files, and systems that stay out of the way of the actual work.
That can be enough to divert a progress payment. Federal cases have documented both versions of the scheme: criminals using a lookalike contractor domain, and criminals sending from a genuinely compromised construction-company mailbox. In one documented case, a North Carolina university sent more than $1.9 million in two transfers to criminals impersonating the contractor on an active project. The message referred to a real project and arrived while a real payment was due, and it was convincing because it fit both.
The same pattern runs both directions: a contractor's customer can be told to redirect money it owes the contractor, or the general contractor can be told to redirect money it owes a subcontractor. Either way, the fraud may not be discovered until the legitimate party asks why an invoice remains unpaid. By then, recovery can be difficult and is not assured.
The accounting system, the project platform, the drawing repository and the subcontractor portal can each hold a different version of the same job. The same cost code, the same contact, the same document, entered separately in systems that were never meant to agree with each other automatically. A connector that fails quietly can leave the field crew and the office each trusting a copy that is already out of date.
Project files can end up scattered across whatever device was closest. Bid documents, CAD files, punch lists and field photos, some in a shared platform, some on a laptop that has not been backed up since it was issued, some in a phone nobody thinks of as project storage. If the authoritative copy is sitting on an unsynchronized device or inside somebody else's project portal, the office may not be able to find it when a bid or dispute depends on it.
A backup that has never been restored is a theory, not a plan. A green checkmark on a backup job says the software ran. It does not say the files, the accounting data and the project platform can actually come back together, in the order the office would need them.
Construction has no single umbrella IT compliance standard, and no provider can certify that an office is immune to payment fraud. What we can do: harden email against impersonation, configure the technical controls that support your payment-verification procedures, and monitor accounts and administrative access. Deciding whether a vendor, an invoice, or a changed bank account is legitimate stays with your accounts-payable process, not with a piece of software.
If a payment is already suspect, contact with the originating bank cannot wait. We can help preserve the evidence and get the right information to your bank quickly. We cannot recover money that has already moved. Any recovery depends on the bank and, if it comes to it, law enforcement.
Send us one question about your office's IT and we will give you a straight answer, at no charge, with nothing to sit through afterwards. We would rather answer a question now than be called after it has turned into a mess. If the honest answer is that somebody has to look at it, we will tell you that too.
This is an answer to a question, not troubleshooting, system access, or ongoing support.
Some questions cannot be answered honestly from the outside. When that happens we may offer to come and look properly: a read-only review of the systems we agree on, and a written summary of the sampled findings and our recommended next steps within the agreed scope. These take real hours, so reviews are subject to availability, and we will confirm any date in writing.
Asking does not book a review. We confirm the scope and the date in writing before anyone touches a system. Printed material does not reserve an appointment. One review per business.
A review is a point-in-time sample of the systems named in the written scope. Items outside that scope are not evaluated and have not passed. This is a limited IT safeguard review, not a fraud audit, a forensic investigation, or a legal opinion.
If changed bank instructions could still be accepted from email alone, that is the question to bring us now.
Call (817) 265-5000 or email [email protected]. Arlington, and we answer our own phone.
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