In an architecture or engineering firm, the person a caller needs is rarely at their desk. The project manager is on a site walk, the principal is at a city council hearing, and the structural engineer is in a coordination meeting. A contractor calls with a field question that will hold up a pour, gets a voicemail, and makes a guess. The answer someone eventually gives by phone never makes it into the project record.
Cannon VoIP lets project calls follow the people who own them: extensions ring on desk phones, the desktop app and the mobile app, recorded calls are transcribed and searchable, and conference rooms with their own dial-in number make the weekly OAC call a non-event. Flat $34 per extension, no contracts, texting and transcription included.
Field questions, client calls, and decisions made by phone
A&E firms field three kinds of calls. Contractor and consultant questions during construction, which are time-sensitive and belong to one PM. Client calls about scope, schedule and fees, which belong to a principal. And calls from permit offices, plan reviewers and utilities, which arrive at random and often want a fax back.
The cost is rarely the missed call itself. It is the decision made on a call that nobody wrote down. A system that transcribes the call and keeps it searchable gives the PM something to paste into the meeting minutes or the RFI log.
What we set up for A&E firms
Why A&E firms switch to Cannon VoIP
Flat $34 per extension per month, month to month, with texting and transcription included and no regulatory fees. Firms staff up for a big project and back down after it, and extensions come and go with the people. Volume discounts start automatically at 25 extensions.
Your number has been on title blocks and stamped drawings for years. It ports for $15 per line, usually the next business day with about two minutes of downtime, and the old system keeps taking calls until the port is done. Within about an hour and a half of DFW Airport we install on-site for free, and we support firms nationwide.
Many firms already run on Microsoft or Google. See our Teams and Google Workspace notes for how the phones fit alongside what you use today.
What a typical setup looks like
A 25-person firm runs an extension for everyone at $34 each, a mix of desk phones and the desktop app, with PMs also on the mobile app. The main menu offers "current projects," "new projects," and "accounting." Current projects goes to the PM group, new projects rings the principals, and accounting goes to a voicemail box that emails transcripts to the bookkeeper.
The weekly owner and contractor calls run on a conference room with its own number, recorded calls are summarized for the minutes, and cloud eFax ($10 per month) handles the reviewers that still fax. With 10 or more users, the AI receptionist is free and covers after hours and overflow.
Common questions from A&E firms
Turn on recording for project lines before construction administration starts, not after the first disagreement. A searchable record of field calls is only useful if it was running when the decision was made.
Keep project calls with the project
Talk to us about call routing, transcripts and conference rooms for your firm.
Talk to us