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Today’s construction industry faces unique demands from commercial and residential customers across sustainability, better designs, economics, etc. Changing trends means general, specialty, or residential services contractors have to adapt to them. With new working patterns and operational changes – it is possible to miscommunicate with stakeholders or find new hurdles in construction project execution.
In this article, we help you understand how digitizing construction project management helps construction businesses adapt by streamlining communication.
Communication challenges that can occur in managing construction projects
Here are 5 key touchpoints of communication failure in a construction project:
- Lack of real-time information access: sharing project updates real time is a challenge without frequent phone calls or email exchanges. A delay in communication would mean a delay in taking action for emergency jobs, thus derailing project timelines.
- Remote workforce: For global general or residential services contractors, managing remote job sites is a huge challenge. Different time zones and lack of on-ground execution visibility means increased costs for supervisor and inspections.
- Jargon usage: different locations may have different construction codes and terminology usage. Maintaining a common language to communicate technical terms may be an issue for global construction companies.
- Lack of documentation: manual documentation practices mean losing valuable progress data. It also makes it inaccessible to get required instructions on time – for example, it may take days to get required hard copies of necessary construction drawings or share updates on design changes.
- Data silos: it is common to create data silos as field service teams collect data manually and store them separately. It becomes difficult to collaborate as it gets difficult to access the right data at the right time.
How construction management software helps in better project collaboration
What is a construction management software?
A construction project management software is a dedicated field service tool that helps oversee complete construction activities across scheduling, invoicing, workforce management, and more.
Typical features include GPS technology for routing, automated scheduling, managing timesheets, analysis of customer or operations data, payment gateways, quotation templates, etc.
How does construction management software improve communication?
Single source of information
Construction management software provides a centralized dashboard to track the project’s progress and activities across job sites. You can track contractors’ invoices, quote requests, send reports to management and check their comments, and view requests from the workforce. This makes it easy to collaborate with everyone and prioritize emergencies.
Document collaboration
You can restrict document access and digitally share important construction drawings to remote job sites using construction management software. Some software also helps access these documents on mobile apps – so workers can quickly access equipment manuals, checklists, designs, etc. It is also possible for multiple field service teams to collaborate on the same document to reduce meetings and practice async work.
More transparency in operations
Construction management software helps keep a digital track record of workforce attendance, store updated timesheets, and determine productive hours spent on the job site. This helps in adhering to the local labor laws and other compliances by providing necessary proof of conduct. Teams can stay on the same page with shared project schedules, get notified of changes, and track them on time.
Less rework due to real-time updates
Construction management software enables sharing updates and job progress in real time with relevant stakeholders. For example, if there is a change in design specification, an engineer on-site can be immediately informed using notifications. One can conduct meetings with remote field service teams without on-site visits.
Assigning and tracking project progress
Construction management software provides many views like Gantt charts, kanban, lists, or any other custom view for visualizing task management. When a task is scheduled, it will automatically notify the assigned worker. It will share the job details, deadlines, important reference documents, client details, etc. The worker can also update job progress for the project manager to track and respond to.
Adopt better communication practices with construction management software
Zuper is a field service management software that helps construction businesses streamline administrative tasks, field operations, handle customer care, and analyze the data to make better business decisions.
Experience how it uses a combination of the latest technologies like GPS, data analysis, generative AI and much more to enable better collaboration, and construction operations management today – book a demo
