Cilantro Engineering

Cilantro Engineering is an established mechanical, electrical and public health engineering contractor, employing around 100 people across its London head office and multiple live project sites throughout central London. Their work spans high-profile residential and commercial developments for major contractors and developers, requiring secure collaboration, rapid mobilisation and dependable IT under constant operational pressure.

Plan IT Support acts as Cilantro Engineering’s fully outsourced IT department, providing day-to-day support, strategic oversight and hands-on presence, with an on-site technician embedded at head office each week.

The challenge

Cilantro Engineering operates in an environment defined by change. Projects ramp up and down, staff join and leave frequently, and teams must collaborate across office, site and contractor boundaries, often working with large CAD and design files.

Over time, their IT estate had naturally evolved to include a mix of cloud services and on-premises systems, with some legacy applications still requiring local servers. The challenge was to modernise and standardise without disrupting critical workflows, while supporting a workforce split between office-based staff and site-based engineers and trades.

An office move in 2024 added further complexity, bringing the usual risks of downtime, disruption and fragmented systems that come with relocating a busy operational team.

Our approach

Plan IT Support provides Cilantro Engineering with a structured, cloud-first IT platform built around Microsoft 365, while continuing to support essential on-premises systems that have not yet transitioned to the cloud.

Our work includes:

• Managing Microsoft 365 as the core productivity and collaboration platform

• Standardising user accounts, devices and workflows across the organisation

• Building and maintaining a SharePoint-based intranet and secure document sharing with external contractors

• Supporting large CAD and design files without compromising performance or security

• Fully automating onboarding and offboarding to cope with a transient workforce

• Managing software licensing and liaising directly with specialist software vendors

• Maintaining a small number of legacy servers that operate largely behind the scenes

Security is enforced consistently across all users, with multi-factor authentication in place throughout and access controls designed to reflect real-world roles rather than individual exceptions. Lost or stolen hardware from project sites is treated as an expected risk, with systems designed to minimise exposure and recover quickly.

Office move and continuity

During Cilantro Engineering’s recent head office move, Plan IT Support planned and delivered the IT transition end-to-end, ensuring systems, connectivity and users were migrated with minimal disruption. Despite the scale and complexity of the business, downtime has remained exceptionally low throughout the many years of our involvement.

The result

Cilantro Engineering now operates on a stable, standardised IT platform that supports rapid change without becoming fragile. New starters can be provisioned quickly and consistently, project teams can collaborate securely with external partners, and staff can work effectively from head office, site or remotely.

Plan IT Support continues to provide proactive management, on-site support and strategic guidance, allowing Cilantro Engineering’s leadership team to focus on delivering complex projects without worrying about whether their IT will keep up.