Increasing Collaboration in the Construction Process with Technology

The statement “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” couldn’t be more true for the construction industry. Technology has made contractors more productive and effective on the job site than ever before. But that doesn’t matter if the plan isn’t good enough to keep up and causes confusion and delays. So how can contractors make sure that the schedules and plans they have are actually practical?

On this episode, host Mike Merrill sits down with Eddie Campbell. Eddie is the chief operating officer at ABSI, a steel building and modeling company for industrial and commercial industries, and he also co-hosts the Construction Brothers Podcast. Eddie shares his insight into pre-planning processes, how to manage trickle down problems, where construction technology enables better collaboration, as well as how collaboration improves company culture and your bottom line.

Key Takeaways

1. The pre-planning process sets the project for success. The success of the project is based on the time and effort placed in the pre-planning phase. Before you break ground, the ability of the project to meet and exceed its goals has already been determined by the owner’s approach to the project and the engineer and architect’s willingness to share and communicate with the general contractor. When planning is put off and a collaborative approach is not used, projects will see poor planning, poor structure, not enough communication and too much reliance on technology. This often leads to schedule delays and lost profits as the plan is corrected and reconfigured.
2. Don’t put off problems for later. Most problems on the job site are much larger than they ever needed to be because they were ignored or the solution was postponed. Contractors need to view their job as staying ahead of issues and possible delays instead of being problem solvers. Technology allows contractors to be a problem avoider, if they are willing to do the work. It will always save the project time, and protect your profits.
3. You need to believe in the why. Technology is there to help accomplish every part of the job today. If you are struggling to get the benefits out of the software you are using, it’s probably that your team hasn’t bought into the culture of leveraging tech.  Turn this around by shining a light on how these solutions benefit them. Is it increasing communication? Collaboration? Is it avoiding errors? Also, look at why else your team might be resisting using tech.  Remember: technology only exposes problems you already have, it rarely creates them.