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How Software Approvals Are Costing Business Productivity

Industry: Civil engineering & construction

Size: 100+ staff
Focus: Finding the real cost of software approvals and installs

Background

We reviewed the software approval process IT for a civil engineering firm with just over 100 staff.
They had a common setup:
  • All software installs and updates needed IT review and approval (0 Trust)
  • IT would remote into the user’s computer to do the install
  • Nothing new could be installed without going through that process
At first glance, this looks sensible. It feels controlled and “secure”.

We wanted to see what it was actually doing to day-to-day work.

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What We Looked At

We pulled 12 months of service history and focused on small, routine requests:
  • PDF tools being installed or updated
  • New printers and drivers
  • Line‑of‑business software updates like AutoCAD and Bluebeam
For each request, we looked at:
  • How many steps were involved
  • How long it took for the user to get back to what they were doing
  • How often IT had to remote in

The pattern was very clear.

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What Was Really Happening

A “simple” request usually went like this:
  1. Staff member raises a ticket
  2. IT would execute review and approval process
  3. IT books a time to remote in
  4. Staff member stops work so IT can log in and click “Install”
The install itself often took 2–5 minutes.
But when we spoke to users and looked at timestamps, the real impact on them was closer to 20–60 minutes per request, once you include:
  • Waiting for approval
  • Waiting for IT
  • Being interrupted when IT remotes in
  • Time to get back into what they were doing
The client was on a fixed IT support contract, so their IT invoice didn’t change.
But that doesn’t help with:
  • Engineers sitting idle or half‑working while they wait
  • Work that doesn’t get done while we handle small software tasks
  • Frustration & Friction every time they need something “quick” from IT

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How Much Time Was Being Lost?

From the tickets we reviewed, there were around 30–40 requests that could not be auto approved in the last year that were:
  • Software installs
  • Software updates
  • Printer/driver changes
  • Similar “small” tasks
Based on how long these typically disrupted people, we used a simple assumption:
  • About 50 minutes of impact saved per request if the process was streamlined
    (moving from ~60 minutes of disruption to ~10 minutes)
That adds up to roughly:
  • 30 requests × 50 minutes ≈ 25 hours
  • 40 requests × 50 minutes ≈ 33 hours
To keep it simple, we rounded that to looking at Output, Not just Wages0–40 hours a year of engineer and project staff time tied up in small IT changes.
For this firm, an engineer’s time isn’t just their wage.
It’s what they can bill or deliver in that hour.
A realistic range for the value of their time is:
  • $150–$300 per hour in terms of project value / billable work.
  • This does not consider their actual hourly wage cost to the business which would increase the numbers below.
Using that and tying hours to hourly output rates you can see the opportunity cost. This does not take into account what a project
engineers time equates to in relation to Project outcomes and how valuable that can be beyond an hourly rate figure for a business.
Hours affected Value per hour Value of output at risk
30 hours $150 $4,500
30 hours $300 $9,000
40 hours $150 $6,000
40 hours $300 $12,000

So, just from these small IT jobs alone, the business is likely losing somewhere between:

$4,500 and $12,000 worth of output each year and this is very pessimistic as its not tied to what a engineer can deliver based on outcomes for projects.
That’s before you factor in:
  • Extra time for internal IT or the MSP
  • Small delays that stack up on projects
  • The effect on team morale when they keep hitting basic IT roadblocks

We haven’t changed the process yet – this is simply what we uncovered by looking at their own data.

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What We Suggested Next

From here, our recommendation was to:
  1. Agree a pre‑approved software list
    • Standard PDF tools
    • Known printer drivers
    • Approved versions and updates of line of business apps like AutoCAD / Bluebeam
    • Other everyday tools already in use
  2. Set up controlled self‑service for those items
    • Staff can request or run installs/updates from their own computer for anything on that list
    • IT still has logging, alerts and the ability to block anything that doesn’t look right
  3. Tighten device security settings
    • Strong security rules and permissions on each device
    • What IT would call a “zero trust” style approach, without extra complexity for the user
    • Security driven by good configuration, not by IT remoting in for every small change
The idea is simple:
  • Keep security strong
  • Stop burning engineer time on things that should take minutes
  • Reduce the constant back-and-forth with IT for small, low‑risk tasks

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Why This Matters for Other SMEs

For growing SMEs, especially in engineering and construction:
  • The main cost is not the software itself
  • And it’s not always the IT support contract
  • IT Controls do not hinder the value of the work that doesn’t happen while people wait for basic IT help
In this case, just by looking at one year of tickets, we found:
At least 30–40 hours of high‑value time being lost each year to software approvals and installs.
If you scale that up across more users, more offices, and more tools, it adds up quickly.