Drive productivity: Improve visibility in operations

“We need to improve productivity.”

You can hear the Project Management Office’s (PMO) directive coming at you over and over again as you shuffle through paper reports.

Your project has been delayed. Yet again. As you anxiously wait for construction materials, you’re aware that you have already wasted an extra $100K in equipment fees.

To make matters worse, your morning is wasted in searching for information, waiting on approvals or confirmation of your newly deployed contractor’s active certification, or requesting the status on shipping and costs.

You can’t help but think: Isn’t this all too familiar?

When the project is over, you’ll be missing visibility of key data, thanks to the highly fragmented nature of the construction industry and its various stakeholders. That makes it nearly impossible to measure overall project performance and pinpoint areas of improvement.

It’s like the construction industry version of Groundhog Day.

There is no doubt there is a disconnect among key players on projects, including subcontractors and field-to-office. Added to this is a lack of complete project visibility among Construction Management Software projects, making it nearly impossible to track and communicate the ROI of large-scale investments.

This disconnect and lack of project transparency cripples field productivity.

If there are any positives at all, it is that you are not alone. Dodge Data & Analytics reported that only 11 percent believed their jobsites to be very efficient. Sixty-one percent said their jobsites are neither very inefficient nor very efficient, putting project sites on par with just mediocre.

How does this correlate to productivity? Of those surveyed, 44 percent said labor productivity impacted jobsite efficiency, and 29 percent blamed jobsite logistics.

It is alarming to see the majority of the companies falling under “mediocre” standards when the construction industry is on a booming, upward trend.

A 2019 report from Frost & Sullivan projected that:

• Buildings and civil infrastructure will be the fastest-growing segments in emerging economies, from 2018 to 2030
• The construction industry will account for 14.7 per cent of all global economic output by 2030
• Global spending in construction is expected to attain US$17.5 trillion by 2030, with China, the U.S. and India accounting for 57 per cent of all global growth while the U.S. and Canada will contribute almost 20 per cent

In order to thrive during the next decade, productivity needs to be addressed. In order to boost productivity and efficiency, companies need to invest in technologies that capture the hard-to-get data between project managers, superintendents, sub-contractors and developers.

Having access to this data allows companies to:

• Simplify operations
• Reduce liability
• Leads to higher profitability
• Deliver consistent, quality results
• Keep projects on time and under budget

Luckily, there are user-friendly, project-driven solutions that discover where and how inefficiencies are occurring without requiring project managers to be everywhere at once. Embracing construction-specific tech tools creates greater jobsite visibility and puts vital data that is captured to good use.

Construction software is an investment. And it is vital to make that investment worth every dime by finding technologies that do the following:

• Use jobsite data. If you are investing time and money in capturing data, you want to make sure it can be put to good use by integrating it among all platforms and software.
• Track data. If you can’t track your people (who are your most valuable asset), the data is useless. Find time and attendance solutions, wearables or daily logging technologies designed for the job site.
• Solve pain points associated with project management. Whether it’s addressing workflows, digitizing paper processes or bringing a digital personal assistant to track your daily activities, find a solution that caters to project management solutions.
• Provide simple, functional reporting capabilities. You shouldn’t have to send your project manager back to school to obtain a data science degree. Reporting should be simple, modern and intuitive.

CEM Business Solutions can help.

We will evaluate your current systems and provides best practices, digital roadmaps and construction-specific tools to help you meet your goals.

We have products for:

– Total IT Automation
– UniConstruct
– Construction Automation
– Microsoft D365 ERP
– HR and Payroll Automation
– Mobile Solutions