If you are a principal running two or more offices, this checklist is for you. It covers the six areas where multi-office architecture firms lose the most time and the most sleep: file access, standards, people changes, security, backups, and support. Use it as a one-page audit of where your firm stands today.

Why a Second Office Changes Everything

One office can run on good intentions. Everyone sits near the same equipment, the same printer, and the same person who “knows the computers.”

Add a second office, in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, or another state, and informal habits stop scaling. Each location starts making its own decisions about software versions, file naming, passwords, and who gets access to what.

The firm still has to deliver as one team. A project manager in one office needs to open a Revit model started by a designer in another, and it needs to open quickly, correctly, and securely.

The checklist below is built around that reality. For each area, ask the questions honestly. If you answer “I’m not sure” more than twice, that is your signal.

1. File Access Speed Between Offices

Large Revit models, AutoCAD drawings, point clouds, and rendering assets are the heaviest files most small businesses ever touch. When two offices work on the same project, slow file access is the most visible pain point and the most expensive one.

Ask yourself:

• Does opening a shared project in the second office take noticeably longer than in the first?
• Do staff keep “local copies” of project folders because the shared ones are too slow?
• Have you ever had two people editing different versions of the same drawing set?
• Do remote and hybrid staff get the same experience as people in the office?
• Do deadline-week slowdowns push people toward workarounds like email attachments or personal file-sharing accounts?

The outcome you want: any team member, in any office or at home, opens the current version of any project they are authorized to see, and it opens at a speed that does not interrupt their work. When that is true, version conflicts and duplicate folders tend to disappear on their own.

2. One Set of Standards Across Every Office

Most multi-office firms do not have a technology problem. They have a consistency problem that shows up as a technology problem.

Ask yourself:

• Are all offices on the same versions of Revit, AutoCAD, and the rest of the Autodesk toolset?
• Do the offices share one folder structure and naming convention, or does each have its own?
• Are templates, families, title blocks, and CAD standards maintained in one place?
• Are computers set up the same way, so a designer can sit down at any workstation and be productive?
• When a software update is released, does someone decide when and how it rolls out, or does each office decide on its own?

A mismatch in software versions between offices is a classic source of “it opened fine on my machine” problems, and in a model-based workflow it can cause real rework.

The test: if a designer from one office spent a week covering in the other, how many hours would they lose to “how do we do it here?”

The outcome you want: a firm that works like one studio, where moving people and projects between offices costs minutes, not days.

3. Onboarding and Offboarding

Every new hire and every departure is a security and productivity event. In a multi-office firm, the risk is that each location handles it differently, or that it depends on one person remembering the steps.

Onboarding questions:

• Can a new hire be fully productive, with the right project access and software, on day one?
• Is there one defined list of what each role needs, such as designer, project manager, or accounting?
• Does it work the same way whether the person starts in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, or remotely?

Offboarding questions:

• When someone leaves, is every account, device, and shared-file permission closed out the same day?
• Do you know who currently has access to your active project data, including former employees and contractors?
• Is company data ever left on a personal laptop, phone, or personal cloud account after someone departs?

Departing employees with lingering access are one of the most common and most preventable exposures we see in small-to-mid-sized firms. Design work is your intellectual property, and it deserves the same discipline as your bank accounts.

The outcome you want: predictable, documented, same-day people changes in every office, with nothing dependent on one person’s memory.

4. Security Basics

You do not need an enterprise security department. You do need the basics done consistently in every location, because attackers look for the weakest office, not the strongest one.

Run through these:

• Multi-factor authentication: Is a second sign-in step required for email and for access to project files, for everyone, in every office?
• Device protection: Are all laptops and workstations protected, monitored, and kept up to date, including the ones at home?
• Email protection: Are phishing and fake-invoice emails screened before they reach your staff? Wire-fraud attempts against firms handling client payments and consultant invoices are common.
• Least access: Does each person see only the projects and financial information they need?
• Staff awareness: Do employees get regular, short training on spotting suspicious messages?
• Client requirements: If your clients, such as institutional, municipal, or commercial owners, ask about your security practices in RFPs or contracts, could you answer confidently today?

Owners increasingly ask design firms how they protect project information. Being able to answer clearly is becoming part of winning work.

The outcome you want: the same protection standard in every office, with no “easy target” location.

5. Backups You Have Actually Tested

Almost every firm says it has backups. Far fewer can say how long it would take to get back to work if the files were lost or encrypted by ransomware.

Ask yourself:

• Do you know exactly what is backed up, including project files, email, accounting data, and anything stored on individual laptops?
• Has a restore been tested in the last year, and did it work?
• If you lost access to project data today, how many days would your teams be unable to produce?
• Can you recover a single deleted folder or an earlier version of a drawing set quickly, without a major effort?
• Does a backup problem in one office get noticed, or would it sit unseen for months?

Think of it in terms of deadlines. A lost week during a permit submission, bid deadline, or construction administration phase is not an IT inconvenience. It is a business event with contractual consequences.

The outcome you want: confidence that your firm’s work is recoverable, with a recovery time you have measured rather than assumed.

6. Support Coverage for Every Location

The last item is the one most firms learn about the hard way. Who does each office call when something breaks, and does every office get the same level of help?

• Is there one clear place to report a problem, or does each office rely on its own “computer person”?
• Does the person who helps your main office also understand how your second office is set up?
• When your IT contact is on vacation or leaves the company, does support continue without a gap?
• Are problems tracked and fixed at the root, or does the same issue keep coming back?
• Do you have someone who looks ahead, such as aging equipment, upcoming software changes, and budget planning, rather than only reacting to emergencies?

A firm with 50 to 300 employees across multiple locations has outgrown the “one helpful staff member” model. Reliable support is a team, a process, and a plan, not one person’s goodwill.

The outcome you want: every office, and every remote employee, gets the same dependable help, and your principals spend their time on design and clients instead of on computers.

Scoring Your Checklist

Count how many questions above you could answer with a confident “yes” or a clear number.

• Most answers clear: your multi-office setup is in good shape. Keep reviewing it yearly.
• A handful of “not sure” answers: you are typical. These are worth a conversation before they become a deadline-week problem.
• Many “not sure” answers: your firm has probably outgrown its current IT approach, and the risk grows with every office and every new hire.

For more on how we approach this work for design firms, see our page on managed IT for architecture, engineering, and construction firms.

Next Step: Talk It Through With a Local Partner

LG Tech MSP is the trusted managed IT partner for architecture and AEC firms across Massachusetts and New Hampshire, along with small-to-mid-sized businesses across other industries. If this checklist raised questions, we are glad to talk them through, with no pressure and no sales script.

Choose whichever is easiest:

• Call: (603) 681-6130
• Email: info@lgtechmsp.com
• Book a scoping call: a short conversation about your offices, your team, and where the friction is
• Stop by our Pelham office: walk-ins are welcome, and no appointment is needed

LG Tech MSP
2 Beaver Brook Way, Unit C
Pelham, NH 03076
(603) 681-6130
info@lgtechmsp.com

Last updated: January 15, 2026