Member Article

The value of construction software

Construction professionals traditionally rely on hard copy documentation and old technology like fax machines and endless emails with attached spreadsheets, to manage construction projects. Job site trailers are filled to capacity with paperwork, the thumb drive with the latest drawing set can be easily lost, and teams are days behind schedule because they’re still trying to get sign-off on a key submittal or a response to an RFI.

Constantly revising, reprinting and redistributing paper-based documentation is costly, time consuming, and almost impossible to manage in a collaborative and efficient manner. Team communications are overwhelming and lost in translation and project schedules slip due to a lack of accurate and timely delivery of project information. The message is clear: outdated technology and inefficient processes used for project communications and collaboration wreak havoc on the bottom line.

Construction software, like Procore, has the capability to not only track documentation, but with the power of analytics, has the ability to leverage that information to provide insight into the status of the project as a whole. Construction software automates many of these manual, and frustratingly time-consuming processes.

In the past, centralization of these documents and team collaboration was a huge ordeal, with massive amounts of hard copies and snail mail. Construction software, however, is changing that with just a few of the ways addressed below.

Increased Visibility

Construction software is often viewed as an “electronic filing cabinet” - an essentially accurate visual of what’s happening virtually, but superficial, as it does so much more.

Construction software provides a structure for all aspects of project management; emails are tracked and documents, daily logs, photographs, contracts, and more can be indexed. This transparency ultimately becomes a risk avoidance tool by helping identify risks before they become an issue impacting the success of the project, as it provides unrivaled visibility into project health at all times.

Automation

Automation was impossible with the old paradigm because all project information was siloed and often bottlenecked project progress.

But with all information being in one centralized place, the connection and collaboration of data becomes effortless. Software automates communication processes and workflows and creates a central hub for real time project information. Data is stored securely in the cloud—ready to be used and shared by all team members, at any time. By properly leveraging the power of construction software, teams can cut their document creation, distribution, and monitoring time in half.

Leveraging construction software is about building the right tools to solve real problems. All the information a team needs to answer their most difficult project questions lives inside their software. With better tools, teams are able to build better projects.

Efficiency

With cloud-based software, teams drastically increase their project efficiency by eliminating the rework brought on by poor version control of project drawings. Cloud-based software organizes construction drawings into one master set and automatically names and numbers every individual sheet, prioritizing the most recent drawing set to ensure project teams never work off of outdated drawings.

Software like Procore offers more than that just version tracking. With a drawing management application, project teams can not only review sheets, but they can also mark up drawings with annotations or text comments, approve changes, and distribute updated plan sets out to the entire project team in a matter of minutes. Teams are able to see all versions—what changes have been made and by whom—and managers are able to review the project change history, providing insight and knowledge for future projects.

Even with limited interaction, these real time as-builts allow subcontractors to communicate with the project manager about the up-to-date drawing or project schedule instantaneously. This increases productivity and ensures all team members are connected and on the same page.

Mobilization

With mobile applications like Procore for iPhone, iPad, and Android, professionals can retrieve real time project data around the clock, from any location with their mobile device. A single repository is created with 24/7 accessibility from any location and gives project teams access to any and all project information whenever they need it. Whether in the office, at home, on the road, or on a remote jobsite, the mobility of cloud-based platforms puts real time project data at the fingertips of the entire team—data is never more than a click or swipe away. Now teams can answer questions instantaneously and make vital decisions based on accurate data, not intuition—increasing productivity and minimizing risk.

Implementing cloud-based construction project management software offers solutions to increase mobilization, transparency, communication and organization and will predictably save time, cut costs and maximize resources, thereby enhancing the efficiency and profitability of projects as a whole.

Read more about the value of construction software in Procore’s free eBook, here.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Alisa Snyder .