Email management software built for construction and engineering
On construction and engineering projects, an email can be legally binding. Who agreed to what, and when, matters enormously, sometimes years after the fact. Ideagen Mail Manager is the specialist email filing and search tool built for AEC firms, ensuring project correspondence is always filed correctly, always findable and always available as evidence when disputes arise or project teams move on.
Trusted by 48,000+ professionals across 2,600+ AEC firms for over 20 years. Built at Arup. Still used by Arup today.
Why AEC firms lose control of project email
AEC firms work on projects that span years, involve multiple organizations and generate vast volumes of correspondence. Every instruction, approval, variation and decision is typically communicated by email. When a dispute surfaces, that correspondence becomes the primary evidence trail.
The problem is that most firms have no reliable system for capturing it. Emails sit in personal inboxes, filed inconsistently or not at all. When a project team finishes a job and key people move on, their inboxes go with them. Years of client correspondence, agreements, approvals and project decisions are effectively lost.
Outlook search is inadequate at this scale. It cannot search across multiple users' filed emails, it struggles with older correspondence and it has no concept of project-based retrieval. For firms working on major infrastructure, commercial development and multi-site programs, this is not a productivity issue. It is a commercial and legal risk.
How Ideagen Mail Manager helps AEC firms
Ideagen Mail Manager sits inside Microsoft Outlook and acts as the filing layer between a team's inbox and wherever project emails need to live.
Prompt and Predict filing
Ideagen Mail Manager uses machine learning to learn how each team member files. It suggests the correct project folder for every email sent and received, so filing happens in one click at the point of sending. No manual dragging, no reliance on individual memory or discipline.
Advanced Search
When a dispute arises or an auditor requests records, Advanced Search retrieves any project email in seconds. It searches across all filed correspondence, however old, regardless of who sent it or whether they still work at the firm. Customers describe reducing e-discovery from weeks of IT resource to minutes.
Files to your infrastructure
Ideagen Mail Manager does not host or store customer data. It files emails directly into the firm's own storage: SharePoint, network drives, Procore, Bentley ProjectWise or any combination. If the firm stops using Ideagen Mail Manager, all filed correspondence remains in place, fully accessible.
Knowledge stays when people leave
Emails are filed to the project, not to the person. When someone leaves the business, every email they sent or received on every project they worked on is still there, findable by anyone with access.
Who uses Ideagen Mail Manager in AEC
Ideagen Mail Manager is purpose-built for firms working on significant projects: multi-site developments, large supply chains, major infrastructure and commercial programs. It is not aimed at five-person firms. It is built for organizations where the cost of a lost email is genuinely significant.
Typical buyers:
- Practice Directors and Managing Directors concerned with reputational damage, financial exposure and the ability to defend the firm's position when disputes arise
- Project Directors and Project Managers who need three-click access to any project email from any time period, without relying on Outlook's search
- BIM Managers and digital transformation leads working toward ISO 19650 compliance and a complete golden thread of project information, including email
- QA and Compliance Managers responsible for consistent filing across the team and audit readiness
- IT Directors evaluating integration complexity, data sovereignty and ROI, with a preference for solutions that file to existing infrastructure without third-party data hosting
Since the AEC market, by nature, is highly litigious, Ideagen Mail Manager also reduces our risk through improved legal compliance. With the enhanced search capabilities we have effectively streamlined our procedure for locating and providing email documentation from a costly and time-consuming project down to a matter of a few minutes. That added security in this industry provides more than just cost savings - it provides peace of mind.
Ideagen Mail Manager is an unsung hero, which has saved our bacon numerous times, where we have managed to locate emails quickly as evidence of what the client has said, sometimes years ago.
I am a huge advocate of Ideagen Mail Manager. The primary benefit for me is the confidence it gives me. Confidence that I can find information when I need to. We work with many different teams within the business, so we are constantly needing to find information from different discussions, and we need to do it quickly. I need to know that anyone in my team can quickly find the same information. Everyone can see all conversation history.
Ready to see how Ideagen Mail Manager can help?
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Frequently asked questions
Ideagen Mail Manager is a specialist email filing and search tool for project-based businesses. It sits inside Microsoft Outlook, uses machine learning to suggest the correct filing location for every email and makes any project email retrievable in seconds, however old it is.
AEC is the heritage market and the largest customer segment, but Ideagen Mail Manager serves project-based businesses across many industries including legal, financial services, consultancy, defense and government. The key qualifier is that the firm needs to file emails to a file server, network drive or multiple destinations beyond SharePoint Online.
Ideagen Mail Manager uses machine learning, not AI, to learn filing behaviors and suggest the correct project folder for every email. The machine learning model is refined by over 20 years of usage data across 48,000+ users.
When a dispute arises, Ideagen Mail Manager's Advanced Search retrieves any project email in seconds, regardless of when it was sent or who sent it. Customers have credited Ideagen Mail Manager with preventing or resolving major contract disputes by producing complete email evidence that would otherwise have taken weeks to reconstruct.
No. Ideagen Mail Manager files emails directly into the firm's own infrastructure: SharePoint, network drives, Procore, Bentley ProjectWise or any combination. Data never passes through Ideagen's servers. The firm retains full ownership and control of all filed correspondence.
Ideagen Mail Manager integrates with SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Procore, Bentley ProjectWise, network drives and the Ideagen Collaboration Portal. It is built to fit into an existing IT stack, not replace it.
Still have questions?
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