The New England Regional Council of Carpenters represents 24,000 members working with over 1,500 leading business contractors. Council leadership engaged Database Designs to devise a new web portal to support the intensive research the organization does around construction opportunities.

For years, NERCC staff printed detailed reports on paper and then brainstormed in team meetings. The new web data systems will enable staff to filter thousands of weekly reports and updates on construction bids to facilitate tracking by contractor, categories of work, location and other factors.

The web portal was built using the Drupal content management and web development framework. Drupal’s built-in social networking features will enable local and regional teams to undertake collaborative, action research online. Monitoring of Council-wide priorities will take place with a customized calendar, activity log, and document repository for each opportunity.

Drupal is an ideal software planform for this project. Drupal’s Open Source model will afford the New England Council many options for easy web-hosting and expansion and sharing of the software in the future without the expense of additional licensing fees.