The market size of the US construction sector is expected to reach over 2.3 trillion USD by 2028. However, the construction industry comes with its fair share of challenges. There are enormous amounts of money, labor, and resources involved and even seemingly minimal disruptions can derail a project. This, in turn, leads to budget overruns, tighter deadlines, delayed timelines, and more, ultimately affecting the bottomline.
Project managers are typically juggling multiple tasks, often including spreadsheets and manual data entry. Leveraging modern project management software built for the construction industry, provides project managers with end-to-end visibility, improved collaboration, higher safety, and stronger control over budgets and schedules.
Performance tracking is an important metric that helps ensure on-time completion and delivery. This also helps optimize contractor performance which, in turn, reduces costs. A critical aspect of performance tracking is the detailed records at the field-level and contractor level.
Without real-time performance data, it will be challenging to assess the performance of field personnel, contractors, and sub-contractors. This is particularly useful when businesses need to renew contracts or start fresh projects.
Changing your project management approach for construction allows for data-driven decisions. Typically, the data can be visualized in various formats with options to export and share it among specific teams. This will allow the teams to dissect the data, understand trends, and compare data between various teams, locations, projects, and even contractors to make the best decision.
Ideally when handling project management, there should be a centralized repository for all the tools, data, and processes required for the entire team which serves as the single source of truth.
Usually with multiple teams working on the same project, they tend to use disparate systems to measure their progress. This leads to fragmented project information spread across multiple systems creating more siloes, making it difficult for project managers to get a comprehensive view.
Having a centralized project management system with all the required data and real-time updates makes it easier for teams to access the latest, most relevant information.
This means instead of teams having to make do with fragmented communication, spread across multiple locations or time zones, teams can simply log into the project management system and see the current status.
When designing new projects, delegating tasks, or tracking progress against specific milestones a centralized project management system for construction allows field workers and relevant teams to keep track of all the updates, feedback, and communication logs, ensuring alignment, sans the nightmare of multiple files with the same name, missed emails, and error-prone Excel spreadsheets.
Real-time project tracking allows all construction projects to be tracked from the ideation stage to completion. If a construction company is launching a new project, real-time project tracking provides a comprehensive view of all the tasks, the people involved and their roles, personnel in-charge of each task, and the milestones in the overall project timeline.
When dealing with multiple systems, it takes significant time to pull the data from multiple systems and make sense of it. This makes it harder to identify potential issues and preemptively mitigate them, Instead, project managers will be forced to firefight at crucial junctures. Real-time project tracking provides vital data and analysis which can be leveraged for proactive problem-solving.
Further, a lack of real-time data creates blind spots in inventory, workforce, and other essential resources. Real-time project tracking and visibility into resource availability and utilization, allows for optimized allocation and usage.
Everyone involved in the project can now stay informed about the status, updates, changes, individual roles and responsibilities allowing for smoother transition and handover between each stage. Additionally, all stakeholders can quickly review the current status of the project at any time. Accurate visibility into projects is fundamental for project managers to make informed decisions and drive the project to successful completion.
Whether contracts, blueprints, compliance documents, or reports, documents are central to all construction projects. Using Excel or hard copies of everything is challenging, to say the least. Shifting from an outdated document management to using a project management system will make the entire process much smoother.
Apart from being a single source of truth and providing easy access, a cloud-based project management system will help with role-based, differential access to sensitive documents along with version-control. This also eliminates the human-error around losing, duplicating, and storing specific documents.
Most importantly, cloud-based document management will provide real-time updates and progress across projects through instant notifications. This feature ensures everyone on the team, especially the on-field personnel, have access to the latest and most relevant information.
For instance, if there has been a change in the design of project ABC, it must be communicated on-time to the contractors and structural engineers. If the construction crew continues with the old design, it will require major rework, additional cost, and major delays. All of this can be avoided if manual or paper-based documentation workflows are replaced with a digital project management system. This ensures that all teams are notified over project updates in real-time, and no critical information is lost in miscommunication.
The construction industry has a tendency to go over budget and over schedule. There are several factors at play that cause project costs to escalate, such as weather conditions, changes in design, material quality, increased material costs, shortage of skilled labor, etc.
Usually when construction projects exceed their timelines, budget overruns come quickly on the heels. Companies have to foot the bill for the additional costs which include labor, subcontractor payments, machine rentals, etc. However, budget overruns could also stem from erroneous calculations.
Project management systems have budget tracking features that help teams monitor the money spent and where, and change course as fit. The budget and how much is being spent are key metrics that need to be tracked to ensure the progress is on track with what is envisioned.
This also provides transparency and make things easier when tax season comes around. A project management system is a great way to minmize overspending, know exactly where the project is currently, and how much money and time has been spent. Further, a reliable project management system will be able to leverage all this data and provide accurate costs and timelines for projects.
Typically, construction projects have several moving parts. As they progress, some tasks may take longer than expected. Instead of being informed about it with the deadline looming over you, using a project management system for construction will flag this intimate the concerned personnel early.
This will allow for early addressal of the delay before it impacts the entire project. This will also allow project managers to bring the project back on track, evade last minute pitfalls, and budget overruns. If there is a single source of truth in place, every project will have its specific tasks, designated roles, milestones, time tracking, deadlines, and resource allocation. This will allow systems to send alerts when a deadline or budget item is at risk.
Conventionally, construction-based administrative tasks are manual, time-consuming, and highly labor-intensive. There is also an enormous scope for error with people using books and Excel to keep track of multiple projects.
Digital tracking allows field crews to log their time using an app from the site resulting in real-time, accurate updates. This allows accounting personnel to simply get the information they need from a single screen, for all current and past projects, instead of making multiple calls to different project managers to get accurate information. Further, this significantly reduces human errors and improves the approval cycle leading to faster invoicing. As this process is implemented across projects, there will also be an increase in cash flow.
Additionally, most project management systems offer seamless integration with existing platforms allowing companies to continue to work without any disruption through the installation.
There are several safety challenges at construction sites due to unsafe working conditions, absence of safety training, minimal or non-existent safety culture, etc. which companies need to adhere to rigorous safety protocols to ensure safety.
Additionally, theer are several compliance factors that need to checked off based on the governing authority and the state. This could be documentation that needs to be updated or the physical presence of specific equipment and training records, supervision, environmental compliance, etc., based on federal and state law.
Ensuring safety protocols are in place and enforcing them is essential. This could look like training field staff on a periodic basis, based on reminders delivered from the project management system, regular environmental checks that help ensure continued compliance, etc. The system will also remind project managers over the necessary compliances and safety protocols necessary for every project to ensure success.
Leveraging a digital project management for construction will help companies maintain compliance across projects, even if they are in different states or time-zones, based on the updated regulations. This goes a long way in ensuring project continuity and eventual success as a lack of compliance will lead to large fines and indefinite halts or delays.
For any construction project to be successful, there must be seamless collaboration between different teams namely, the architects, engineers, contractors, sub-contractors, and suppliers. Typically construction companies use different communication channels for each team. When teams work in silos, they are disconnected from the stakeholders, and lack visibility into the progress and over shared responsibilities.
Further, legacy systems and outdated modes of communication can severely hinder collaboration. Instead of jumping from one communication channel to another to stay updated about the progress, project management systems allow for seamless collaboration and communication with integrated communication tools. This allows teams working together on specific projects to see all deliverables, discuss, share documents, and update everyone on the progress.
With automatic notifications, everyone gets real-time updates regardless of geographical differences. Additionally, with cloud-based access, updates can be made on-the-go, and issues can be resolved quickly, ensuring smooth project execution. For instance, a customary status update on the progress and obstacles shared with the entire team each day will significantly boost visibility and eliminate most coordination roadblocks.
There is usually a long-standing resistance to adopt newer technology, especially when it comes to traditional industries like construction. Companies often resort to manual data collection and data analysis to create reports. This method is highly error-prone, time-consuming, labor-intensive, and leads to inaccurate data reports. These data reports form the basis for strategic decisions and can potentially cost the company their bottomline.
If there is a lack of standardization in reporting formats it will be very tough to integrate different data sets, compare them, and analyze the data. Additionally, when data is gathered from multiple sources or from different systems/platforms, there will be inconsistencies which also lead to inaccurate reports.
Project management systems help generate accurate reports that provide visibility into the project and the progress. High-quality, clean data helps build accurate reports and offer nuanced insights which drive strategic decision-making. Prioritizing high-quality data and accurate reporting requires investing in a project management system that automates data collection, analysis, and reporting.
While intelligent project management systems can accelerate your efficiency, relying on legacy software, outdated processes, and spreadsheets can quickly drag you down. Today, construction projects require tools that offer advanced analytics and automation. Project management software expressly designed and developed for construction companies offers unique functionalities to simplify operations such as automated staff responsibilities, workload balancing and management, Gantt charts, etc.
This allows for end-to-end visibility, role-based access, and real-time updates that enables all team members, regardless of physical location, to be in the loop over what is happening with each project.
If the system and processes in place are agile then construction companies will be able to adapt, problem-solve, and respond to unexpected challenges easily. More importantly a system that allows employees to work at their maximum potential will slowly and surely build business resilience.
In today’s digital landscape, transitioning from legacy systems to modern project management platforms is no longer optional, but a strategic imperative. As with most things, adoption of new technology is often an uphill task that needs to be driven by the management.
However, providing training and support will go a long way in ensuring faster and smoother adoption of newer technologies. Shifting from the conventional approach of project management offers several benefits ranging from increased accountability, less business liability, better compliance and document management, and so much more.
Kyro is an AI-powered software that works to increase the growth rate of construction companies by providing access to both our technology and to capital. Reach out to us for a free demo to understand how we can help you streamline your project management.
