You're in charge of supervising construction at three downtown projects. With about 50 of your own employees and about a dozen different subcontractors working with you, coordinating efforts has been your number-one challenge. Time lost to delays and miscommunication are unacceptable and costly. You find yourself constantly rushing from one site to the other and back to the home office. Everywhere you go, you carry a two-way pager and cellular phone.

Used to be, you were lugging around a laptop computer, too. It was the only way you could keep on top of your email -- and you never knew when you were going to get a message that could mean a major change. For example, you remember the time when there was an unexpected problem with a permit that required a design change. Unfortunately, a cement delivery was on its way to the construction site. You couldn't exactly shoot an e-mail message over to the delivery truck. And you certainly would have liked that extra shift of workers you were bringing in that day report to one of your other construction sites until the issue got settled. But there was no way to communicate quickly enough with everyone in the field.

In those days, glitches like that were inevitable. You just assumed it was one of the costs of doing business. Now you can instantly deliver time-critical information to mobile workers on-site or en route, without worrying about where or how they will receive it. Problems like that are a thing of the past -- ever since your company installed Mobile Services for Domino.

Mobile Services for Domino lets you extend the power of e-mail and applications to pagers and data-enabled cellular phones and other wireless devices. You've even extended Mobile Services for Domino directly to subcontractors over the Web via a Domino-based extranet. Any authorized person with a Web browser can exchange messages with your people in the field. Anyone and everyone on a job can be made instantly aware of important information.

Now, if there's a problem with a building permit, you find out right away because urgent e-mails automatically forward to your pager. With your new pager that has its own keypad and microbrowser, you can view your Notes in-box. You can search for messages by sender. Now you can alert people to schedule changes wherever and whenever you need to, and they are immediately notified of the change. And you can notify virtually all of your employees and other vendors whenever there's been a change of plan.

Just for example, one of the problems plaguing you a year ago was getting the right skill sets to each construction site at the right time. You might need an electrician at one site for a few hours in the morning, you might need him somewhere else in the afternoon. You had IS build you an application to automatically notify the electrician and all the other workers of where they need to be and when. You especially appreciate the way the system confirms to you that the message was successfully transmitted. Now you have the workers you need, where you need them.

The vendors you work with are delighted with Mobile Services for Domino, too. Even though some of them don't have Notes, they can all use your company's Domino-based Web site to contact other mobile users in your organization.

The other great change for you is that now, you always get a good night's sleep. When the inevitable, middle-of-the-night emergencies came up, you'd be the one that got the page -- even though nighttime emergencies weren't your responsibility. Now the system knows. You set up a profile for yourself that specifies which hours you are on duty, and which hours you are not. During off hours, messages directed to you automatically forward to the correct person. It's a simple thing, but what a difference it makes to your family.

You remember when you first got into this business, your predecessor liked to say that supervising large construction projects was a lot like piloting a super-tanker. You just couldn't turn on a dime. Next time you see him you're going to tell him that now you can.