The Brief
Construction design teams work with large drawing sets that go through dozens of revisions. Without version control, teams lose track of what changed, when, and why — leading to costly errors on site.
The challenge was bringing the discipline of Git-based version control to teams of architects and engineers who have no interest in learning Git.
What We Built
DesignSync abstracts Git entirely behind a clean, domain-specific interface. Teams upload drawings and documents through a familiar UI — the backend handles versioning, history, and storage automatically using the GitHub API and Google Drive.
- File versioning — every upload creates a new version, with full history and diff tracking
- Google Drive integration — files stored where teams already work
- GitHub API backend — version control logic without exposing Git to users
- Team dashboards — project status, revision history, and activity tracking
- Role-based access — architects, engineers, and clients each see what they need
Technical Decisions
GitHub as a version control backend, not a developer tool. The GitHub API gives us a robust, battle-tested versioning system. DesignSync exposes none of Git’s complexity — users see file versions and history, not commits and branches.
Google Drive for file storage. Design teams already store files in Drive. Integrating with it rather than replacing it reduces friction and avoids the adoption barrier of a new storage system.
Results
- Version history and rollback available on every design file
- Zero Git knowledge required from end users
- Revision tracking reducing miscommunication between design and site teams
- Structured workflow from upload to approval to archive