A case study in replacing a reactive in-house IT team with a strategic managed services partnership across heavy civil construction, asphalt manufacturing, trucking, and materials testing.
Key Takeaways
- The company: LPX Group, parent of Louisville Paving and Construction, operates a multi-entity enterprise spanning heavy civil construction, asphalt manufacturing, trucking, and materials testing across Kentucky and Indiana.
- The growth: LPX scaled from a $40 million local operation to a $350 million enterprise with hundreds of employees over roughly a decade.
- The problem: The in-house IT team, originally built for on-premises, localized infrastructure, had become reactive and was constantly troubleshooting connectivity and deploying hardware across decentralized sites rather than planning strategically.
- The decision: Rather than continuing expanding the internal IT department, LPX fully outsourced its IT function to Advanced Business Solutions (ABS), a Louisville, KY-based strategic IT partner.
- The outcome: Standardized hardware and forecasting, documented onboarding/offboarding, predictable budgeting, cloud migration, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint governance, and consistent support experience from the main office to the job trailer.
Why a growing construction company outgrew its in-house IT team
Louisville Paving and its parent company, LPX Group, run one of the most diverse infrastructure portfolios in the region: heavy civil construction, asphalt manufacturing, trucking, and materials testing, all operating across Kentucky and Indiana. Over the past decade, LPX grew from a $40 million local operation into a $350 million enterprise with hundreds of employees. That kind of growth reshapes every function of a business, and IT is rarely the first place leadership looks, until it becomes the bottleneck.
LPX’s internal IT team had been built for a different company: localized infrastructure, on-premises servers, and a single set of users in a single kind of environment. As the enterprise diversified and decentralized, that team ended up in a permanent reactive loop: deploying hardware, chasing connectivity problems on remote job sites, and managing disconnected systems across multiple operating companies.
“We needed a team of professionals with the expertise and scalability to grow with us.”
— Matt Riggle, Chief Administrative Officer, LPX Group
The question for LPX leadership wasn’t whether IT needed to change. It was whether to keep building an in-house department or partner with someone whose entire business is IT. They chose the second path and partnered with Advanced Business Solutions (ABS) to fully outsource the function.
What does it mean to fully outsource an IT department?
Fully outsourcing IT means handing off the operational ownership of an internal IT function (end-user support, network infrastructure, hardware lifecycle, vendor coordination, cybersecurity, and strategic planning) to an external partner who becomes the single point of accountability. It is different from hiring a managed services provider for a specific layer (like help desk or cloud hosting). In a fully outsourced model, the partner is the IT department.
For LPX Group, that meant ABS replaced a reactive, stretched in-house structure with a proactive, forward-thinking team capable of supporting every LPX entity across every location and line of business, from the corporate office to active job trailers.
Why did LPX Group choose to outsource IT instead of hiring more internal staff?
The straightforward answer: scale, specialization, and speed. Continuing to expand the internal department would have meant hiring for every specialty a modern multi-entity enterprise needs (cybersecurity, cloud architecture, network engineering, end-user support, governance, vendor management) and then retaining that talent in a competitive market.
Outsourcing to ABS gave LPX access to that full bench of expertise on day one, without taking on the cost and management overhead of building it in-house. It also freed LPX leadership to focus on what the business does: building infrastructure and growing its portfolio.
How did ABS transition LPX’s IT department without disrupting operations?
Transitioning a full IT department is never simple, particularly across a multi-entity enterprise with active job sites. ABS worked alongside LPX leadership to protect business continuity through the change. The transition focused on four disciplines:
- Knowledge capture: Gathering critical system knowledge from the existing team before it left the building.
- User onboarding: Bringing every LPX user into the new support model with clear expectations and communication.
- Governance: Establishing documentation, process, and permissions standards so the new structure would hold up as the company keeps scaling.
- Single point of contact: From day one, ABS became the accountable party for end-user support, network infrastructure, hardware lifecycle management, and vendor coordination.
What strategic changes did ABS make to LPX’s IT operation?
Taking over operations was only the first layer. ABS also helped LPX rethink how IT is run. Several strategic shifts made the biggest difference:
- Standardized hardware and forecasting: Reducing waste and aligning device selection to the actual needs of different user roles. For instance, an office user and a superintendent running a job trailer don’t need the same machine.
- Predictable strategic and budget reviews: IT planning became transparent and forecastable instead of reactive.
- Documented onboarding and offboarding: New hires get up and running faster; departures are handled cleanly, and security exposure goes down.
- Advisor-led major projects: ABS leads initiatives such as cybersecurity assessments, cloud migration, SharePoint governance, and end-user training.
- Coordinated vendor ecosystem: For specialized needs like conference room upgrades, ABS manages the trusted third-party vendors rather than leaving LPX to juggle them.
What results has LPX Group seen since partnering with ABS?
Since the partnership began, LPX has realized meaningful cost efficiencies, stronger operational consistency, and perhaps most importantly, the removal of technology as a barrier to growth. Teams across every business unit now work inside a standardized, documented, and responsive IT environment, whether they’re sitting in the main office, running a job trailer on site, or working remotely.
LPX also now has confidence that its IT can keep pace with the business. The trust that makes that work is what Riggle emphasizes most:
“When ABS makes a recommendation, we trust it’s in our best interest, not just the most profitable choice for them. That kind of alignment is rare.”
— Matt Riggle, Chief Administrative Officer, LPX Group
Major initiatives now underway with ABS include:
Company-wide cloud migration, conference room upgrades, and structured governance for Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. This kind of forward-looking project would have been nearly impossible to run while the internal team was still stuck in reactive mode.
The bottom line: IT as a growth lever, not a growth ceiling
The LPX Group story is a reminder that IT is one of the first functions to hit its ceiling when a business scales, and one of the last functions leadership tends to rethink strategically. For a multi-entity contractor moving fast across multiple states and lines of business, an in-house team that once worked brilliantly can quietly become a bottleneck on growth.
Outsourcing IT to a strategic partner like ABS doesn’t just plug the gap. It converts IT from a reactive cost center into a proactive capability to one that scales alongside the business, protects it, and enables bigger initiatives like cloud migration, SharePoint governance, and AI readiness down the road.
Ready to future-proof your IT strategy?
If your construction or multi-entity business has outgrown reactive, in-house IT, or if you’re weighing whether to keep expanding your internal team or partner with a strategic provider, then Advanced Business Solutions can help you scope the transition and lead it.
Frequently asked questions about outsourcing IT for construction companies:
What kinds of construction companies benefit most from outsourcing IT?
Multi-entity operators and growth-stage contractors tend to benefit most. When a construction business scales past a single operating company (i.e. adding asphalt, trucking, materials testing, or additional regional entities), the IT footprint becomes too complex for a small internal team to manage reactively. That’s the inflection point LPX Group hit on the way from $40 million to $350 million in revenue.
Does outsourcing IT actually save money for a large company?
In LPX’s case, yes, but the real savings come less from headcount and more from standardization, better forecasting, reduced hardware waste, and fewer emergency interventions. Predictable IT spend is often more valuable than a lower IT spend, particularly for contractors managing tight project-level margins.
How is IT support delivered to remote job sites and job trailers?
For field-heavy businesses, support cannot end at the office door. ABS provides a standardized, documented support environment that extends to job trailers and remote workers, so a superintendent on a site sixty miles from headquarters gets the same response and reliability as someone at the main office.
What is the difference between a managed services provider and a fully outsourced IT department?
A managed services provider typically handles specific layers of IT (help desk, patching, or network monitoring). A fully outsourced IT department replaces the in-house function entirely, taking ownership of end-user support, infrastructure, cybersecurity, vendor coordination, and strategic planning under one accountable partner. LPX’s engagement with ABS is the fully outsourced model.
Who is Advanced Business Solutions (ABS)?
Advanced Business Solutions is a strategic IT partner headquartered at 1745 Payne Street, Louisville, KY 40206. ABS provides outsourced IT, managed services, Virtual CIO leadership, cybersecurity, cloud migration, and Microsoft 365 governance to growth-stage companies across the region with deep experience supporting construction, heavy civil, and multi-entity enterprises. ABS can be reached at 502-896-2557 or AdvancedBusinessSolutions.com.
