“Bluetowne is there when we need them, without the overhead associated with having a dedicated IT person on my staff. They are intimately familiar with our environment and resolve any issues that arise quickly. Bluetowne provides a critical support function that enables me to focus on what we do best – provide high-value, quality engineering services.” – Richard L. Owens, PE, Managing Principal, Live Oak Consultants

THE CLIENT

Live Oak Consultants (LOC) is a full service civil, structural, mechanical, plumbing and electrical engineering firm providing quality, custom solutions to meet their client’s needs using the latest technologies. LOC is designed to be responsive to projects of all sizes, and boasts an impressive client list that includes names like Boeing, SC Ports Authority, Gulfstream Aerospace, Trident Technical College, MUSC, Robert Bosch, Clemson University, The College of Charleston, BP Cooper River, Lowcountry Orphan Relief, Metanoia, Water Mission, WestRock, Ingevity, Nucor, and Patriots Point Development Authority.

THE CHALLENGE

LOC was growing from a small firm, and reached the point where they could not effectively manage their own IT, and needed outside help and expertise. Due to the nature of LOC’s work, they demand an always available, secure environment with large file storage and high performance computing requirements for massive customer projects. Remote workers must also be able to operate effectively utilizing the firm’s CAD software and large file storage at a high performance level. LOC needed a partner who could not only lead their IT strategy to support the company’s fast growth and technology requirements, but also manage the daily operations and end-user requests so they could focus on providing responsive, high end service to clients.

THE SOLUTION

Bluetowne’s advanced service desk, monitoring and proactive maintenance solution was implemented to create a cohesive and high performance environment to meet the demands of LOC’s mission critical end-user requirements. With an infrastructure powered by Cisco, Meraki and Dell, LOC’s operating platform was tuned and optimized to provide higher throughput network capacity and visibility into network bottlenecks and congestion. Bluetowne implemented an end-user compute standardization and hardware validation based on repeatable custom computer images, providing seamless functionality with LOC’s multi-layer CAD and design applications. Finally, layered security was deployed across the environment to provide central logging of application and hardware activity. Bluetowne’s managed platform services support application was rolled out to provide end-users the ability to live chat with a remote technician, create support tickets efficiently and provide on-the-fly self help by running local system maintenance and tuning commands.

THE RESULT

Bluetowne’s BlueCare managed platform service provided LOC with a hands-off solution that addressed their high performance IT operating requirements and provided standardization in a responsive, repeatable and economical deliverable. End-users now operate at a higher productivity level with greater confidence in system up-time. All infrastructure and end-user computing systems are regularly monitored and tuned in accordance with industry best-practices and Bluetowne field-experienced engineering validation. As a result of Bluetowne’s ongoing service delivery, LOC is able to scale effectively, achieve operational efficiency, and proceed with confidence in achieving success with their demanding daily workload. LOC’s IT infrastructure is stable, effective and provides the firm competitive confidence in their marketplace.

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