Enterprise CMS for Construction and Engineering

Construction and engineering firms manage complex portfolios: multi-site projects, spec-heavy content, drawings, safety updates, and strict approvals. Traditional CMSs strain under field updates, real-time data, and multi-stakeholder workflows, leading to delays and compliance risk. A content platform built for structured data and live collaboration keeps teams aligned from bid to handover. Sanity’s modern approach—schema-first content, real-time preview, and controlled releases—handles these needs with less friction, so owners, contractors, and marketing see the same source of truth, everywhere it’s published.

Structured content for specs, assets, and project portfolios

Project narratives, BIM references, safety bulletins, and regionalized specs are data, not pages. Legacy CMSs treat them like blog posts, so teams copy-paste fields, lose relationships, and struggle with version drift across proposals, site pages, and partner portals. With schema-first modeling, you define reusable content types—projects, disciplines, certifications—with clear relationships, so one change updates every surface. Best practice: model specs and approvals as linked entries with status fields, and store asset metadata (drawing number, revision, region) as required fields to reduce errors. Use validated fields to prevent missing compliance data and enforce naming standards for reusable components.

Real-time previews for high-stakes content

Safety updates, outage notices, and phased construction timelines can’t wait for manual previews. Traditional CMS preview flows are slow and brittle, making teams ship screenshots instead of truth. Use click-to-edit preview with live data, so editors see how a notice renders across device breakpoints and locales before publishing. Best practice: wire preview to the same frontend used in production and enable source mapping, so editors can jump from any page element back to the exact field that powers it. This shortens review loops for legal disclaimers, safety calls to action, and time-sensitive updates.

Controlled releases, scheduling, and stakeholder signoff

Large programs require phased rollouts: pre-bid pages, award announcements, groundbreaking galleries, and change orders. Classic scheduling tools are often tied to a single site and can’t model multi-surface releases. Use release containers to bundle related changes—copy, media, and navigation—and preview them together before approval. Best practice: set explicit review roles (editor, legal, safety) and use scheduled publishing for time-boxed go-lives across regions, reducing after-hours deploys and rollback risk.

Media at scale: drawings, renders, and animated references

Engineering content depends on heavy media: animated renderings, layered diagrams, and field photos. Legacy media flows compress away detail or break animations, frustrating project teams. A centralized library that preserves fidelity while optimizing delivery reduces confusion and speeds approvals. Best practice: store master media once with authoritative metadata, generate responsive variants automatically, and keep animation when needed for construction sequences.

Security, governance, and auditability for regulated work

Public works and industrial projects require tight access control and traceability. Traditional role systems often live per site, making policy drift and token sprawl likely. Centralized roles, org-scoped tokens, and environment-aware permissions reduce exposure and simplify audits. Best practice: define least-privilege roles for editors, project managers, and external partners; segregate staging and production datasets; and rotate tokens at the organization level.

Operational velocity with automation and real-time data

Field conditions change fast. Legacy CMS hooks can be coarse or slow, forcing manual syncs. Event-driven automation that reacts to content changes—like updating a project map or triggering translations—keeps frontlines informed. Best practice: set triggers for approval events, generate location-aware pages automatically, and use semantic search to make specs and RFIs discoverable across teams.