Collaborate with Subcontractors

It is very common for sections of work to be subcontracted. This work of course needs to be quality assured like the rest of your work. Rather than duplicating the QA records, or doing the QA on your subcontractor’s behalf, CivilPro allows you to give your subcontractor restricted access directly into your project so they can compile their own records.

Typically, there are two ways you can operate this:

1. Raise the lots you want the subcontractor to use, and have them complete the supplementary records  such as Checklists, Test Requests, Filestore docs etc.

2. Have the subcontractor raise their own lots and then proceed as per 1

This process shows you how to create an entry for your subcontractors, add users and manage the permission levels for that subcontractor team.  You can create as many subcontractor teams as you need and assign users to these teams.  The access each user has is independent of the subcontractor team they are assigned to, rather they are defined by the roles they have, just like any other user.

The process for setting up subcontractor access is as follows:

1. Set up a role for each different set of permissions you want different users to have when they access as subcontractors
2. Assign users one of the restricted access roles you have created
3. Create subcontractors in the Subcontractor register and assign users to each subcontractor
4. Assign lots to either subcontractors or individual users

Note : You must be an Administrator to be able to add a role.

Related Links:

Add Roles

Add Users

User Roles

1. Set Up and Assign a Role for Subcontractors

Before you create a role and set up permission levels for your subcontractors, you must decide what different access levels the subcontractor users should have.  Each different set of permission levels will require a new role. Please note that roles can only be assigned at individual user level . The purpose of having  subcontractor teams is to facilitate assigning a collection of users to lots.

Generally, you want to prevent subcontractor users seeing all the records in your project. You can restrict a user's access to only records that are allocated to them, or which they have created (if they have been given "Add" permission).  This is achieved by granting "View Limited" permission for the relevant registers in the allocated roles.

For example, you may have a well trained QA rep working with one of your subcontractors. You could create a role with permission to raise lots and complete the related records. To do this you could grant "View Limited" access (so they can’t see other records), and add/edit access across Lots, Test Requests, Filestore docs, etc. and assign the role to the QA rep.

Conversely, another subcontractor may be inexperienced with QA, or not understand the lot numbering system. You could create another role for users restricting them so they can only complete the supplementary records ( e.g. Checklists, Test Requests, Filestore docs, etc) for the lots that you raise.

Example:

You are creating an entry for the Electrical Subcontractor - ElecPro and the following users will be added to this team:

1) Max - Subcontractor Team Leader

2) Cat - Subcontractor QA Assistant

3) Bill - Subcontractor Administrator

You want Max to be able to add and update Lots, Test Request, Checklist, Approval and Filestore that are allocated to him ( these will include records raised by himself). His access will be as follows:

You want Cat to be able to add Test Requests and Checklist. You also want her to be able to add Filestore records relating to Test Requests, so this means add and possibly edit permission on Filestore.

Her access will be as follows:

You want Bill to be able to create, add and delete  Subcontractors. This can be applied using the "Subcontractor Management" option. His access will be as follows:

As you can see from the above example, within each category of subcontractors, you can have a team of subcontractors with different set of user permissions depending on their roles.

2. Create a Subcontractor Team and assign users to each team  

After you have set up their roles and invited the subcontractors to your project, you can create an entry for the subcontractor in the Subcontractor register.

2.1 Navigate to the QA Setup, then select Subcontractors.

2.2 Click on the tab "New Subcontractor". Enter the name of your subcontractor ( e.g. ElecPro ) in the "Create new Subcontractor" dialog box.  Click "Save".

2.3 To add users to the team, click on the "Related Items" icon on the right panel, then the link icon next to "Users". 

2.4 Select the users to be added for this Subcontractor team. Click "Save".

2.5 You can now view all the users added to this Subcontractors team under Users.

3. Assign Lots to Subcontractors or Individual Users

3.1 Next, assign the relevant Lots to this team of Subcontractors that they can access. Click on "Lots" under Related Items".

Tip: You can also link the Subcontractors to Lots from the Lot register using the "Subcontractors" link under Related Items.

3.2 Select the lots to be linked to this Subcontractors team. Click "Save".

3.3 You can now view all the Lots added for the Subcontractor team to access.

Note: The level of access to these added Lots depends on the permissions granted in the role of the users as explained in Part  1.

3.4.  Individual Subcontractor

Even if you are linking a single user to a Lot, it is still beneficial to create a Subcontractor team. The advantage of doing this is that it allows easy changes to the Subcontractor team. If a subcontractor has an engineer that is allocated 50 lots using the User link, then if that person is changed, every link would need to be updated. If you had a subcontractor entry with that user assigned, you could just update the user attached to the subcontractor instead.

The process remains the same except only one subcontractor is added to the team..