“It is a bridge between the office and the field. It ties them together in a way that keeps us organized and accountable and it keeps all our things in order.”

LaFata & Son Inc. has been moving dirt along Connecticut’s shoreline for more than 50 years. Anthony LaFata took over the company’s excavation division in the 1980s and has grown it into a full-service site work operation serving residential developers, municipalities, and commercial contractors across the region. Over time, Anthony expanded the business into a second company—A&D Equipment—selling the same excavator attachments the LaFata crews rely on every day.

The work is technical, time-sensitive, and almost entirely invisible once it’s done. Utility lines, septic systems, foundation stub-outs — everything gets backfilled and buried. If a crew couldn’t locate something later, or a customer disputed whether work was done at all, the only option was to dig it up and find out. Without a reliable documentation system, that’s exactly what happened.

“Before CompanyCam, we took photos, but conveying that information was super difficult and super problematic,” Anthony said. Without a central place to store and share them, photos stayed trapped on personal phones. There was no standard for what to document, no easy way to share photos with the office, and no way to find them later or tie them to a specific job.

The company also had no way to protect itself when disputes arose. If a customer claimed work wasn’t done, or a contractor blamed LaFata for damage that happened overnight, there was no proof either way.

Anthony tried other technology platforms over the years, spending significant money on servers, software, and training that never stuck. CompanyCam caught his attention through social media, and after a trial, the whole team was using it within weeks. For a company with multiple crews spread across several active job sites at any given time, having one place where every photo, update, and job record lived wasn’t just convenient, it was the only way to stay in control.

The crew now follows a consistent routine: photos at the start of every day, throughout the job every 15 – 20 minutes, and again before leaving the site. Every delivery receipt, daily job sheet, and material purchase gets photographed and tied to the project. Operations manager Luke Cormier can monitor any job from his phone without driving there.

“It’s nice to be on a job, but also be able to monitor what’s going on at another job. I can just go on my phone, look at the pictures and see this is going on.”

The documentation routine has paid off directly. When something goes wrong on a job site or disputes arise, LaFata’s crew has the answers. Their photo record proves their work and protects their reputation.

When a gas meter was struck overnight on one of LaFata’s active job sites, the crew’s end-of-day photos proved their equipment hadn’t moved. LaFata escaped a $10,000 repair bill because they had the photos to prove the damage wasn’t their fault.