Labor productivity in construction has remained relatively stagnant over the past two decades. With the ongoing battle of labor shortages still affecting the industry, contractors are trying to find ways to get the most productivity out of all of their project teams while ensuring safe job sites and satisfied customers.
For construction companies, continuous improvement is key to increasing productivity. Although labor productivity is increasing, in general, even inefficiencies such as lack of coordination and communication, poor management of schedules, duplication of documents, among others, can generate staggering costs. With these pain points in mind, companies can begin designing a winning digital strategy to improve efficiency where it matters most:
Chances are, your projects will continue to rely on manual processes that create unnecessary administrative work and are error-prone. Even if you've taken significant steps to eliminate old paper-like systems, many businesses are still using unconnected tools like Excel and sending documents back and forth via email attachments. Beyond wasting time, "honest" mistakes in a manual system like Excel can result in the loss of millions and even billions of dollars. While the stakes in your business may not be that high, if you're not using automation to control errors, you could still lose valuable time and profits.
When construction workflows are automated, you can reduce significant administrative burdens and streamline communications and tasks. Automation includes notifying the relevant person when action or approval is needed, improving the speed of response. While automation certainly improves efficiency, allowing staff to accomplish more, faster, it also helps reduce common human errors that can add up. With the combination of innovative people and technology, automation can help them streamline those problems with fewer errors.
When it comes to increasing productivity, having a strategy with all project members adopting technology can be one of the fastest routes with the highest rewards. In addition to looking for tools that automate important workflows, here are the key types of technology to consider when looking to improve coordination and communication:
Most of the tools listed above, particularly a connected build platform, will help provide a single reliable source of all project information and data. However, the sooner the entire project team can access data and collaborate in one place, the better; of course, better planning will improve productivity. However, when teams have a source of accurate data from the start, they can improve communications, mitigate issues faster, reduce errors and rework during the build phase.
Better yet, more data in planning processes means contractors can leverage this data on future projects to continue to improve the efficiency of their operations. Once common documentation standards are established, teams should also strive to analyze data from past projects to identify and remove barriers to productivity. By developing metrics to determine how accurate current planning processes are, contractors can set realistic benchmarks to ensure improvement.
Do you have individuals or teams that are helping drive higher productivity and project improvements? Don't let these efforts go unnoticed. It's important to celebrate and support those people who are working to change processes and implement technology to drive meaningful business results. These are also the people you can't afford to lose in a labor shortage.