Is Your Construction Data Selling Your Projects Short?

One of the most vital aspects to any construction project is effective collaboration among all stakeholders. That’s why project status/project review meetings have become such an important part of the construction process. But in order for these meetings — and construction collaboration as a whole — to be effective, stakeholders need to be working with the very latest project data.

If your organization is not able to access and review real-time data, your stakeholders cannot leverage that data to make real-time project and business decisions. In a recent webinar, Raising the Bar at your Project Status Review Meeting, we looked at the significance of that long-standing construction industry challenge, and why improving technologies and workflows to capture and analyze real-time construction data can make all the difference. 

During the webinar, Viewpoint’s product manager for analytics, Krian Penaka; product marketing analyst, Daniel Griffith; and director of data and analytics, Anne Hunt all discussed how stronger data has shown to lead to better construction management. They were joined by ViewpointOne user, Advanced Technology Group, Inc., (ATG), an early adopter of Viewpoint Analytics. ATG’s CFO, Jim Voss, and project manager, Trylan Wassman from both discussed how they use ViewpointOne and Viewpoint Analytics to drive better data gathering and analysis in real time, improving project workflows and client satisfaction.

The first step toward improving the collaboration process is to understand what makes for effective construction collaboration. A noteworthy status meeting can help fulfill your goals and ultimately, your client’s objectives. Here are three key elements every project status meeting should have:

1. An in-depth review of remaining project deliverables: Instead of focusing on what has been done, concentrate and review what lies ahead.
2. Reinforcement of the client’s goals: The customer’s objectives and goals should be maintained throughout the commissioning of the project, design and build. Ensure widespread unity of the project objectives.

Informed progress reports backed by sound, timely construction data: This allows you to easily speak to progress and what is being done to meet construction customer goals. It will create a visual and help you and your team further understand what needs to be done.

Although project success can mean something a little different to every construction organization, our recent webinar discussed why the best construction projects are led by a construction project manager that is able to identify:

• Early warning signs for potential project issues and the ability to act on them in a timely manner — looking for early risk indicators that can veer from the overall scope of the project and cause profit fade
• Relevant information for budget control — using construction data that will help the project stay under budget
• Control timing and quality of work — deciding when to bring in the right labor, equipment and materials at the right time

Can your project managers do all of that? Yes, with the right tools. Many project managers often struggle with effective data collection from their projects, or are looking for ways to gather and take advantage of data to get favorable results. However, lackluster reports that aren’t easy to read and getting construction data from the field can be time consuming and frustrating.

An integrated suite of cloud-based construction solutions, however, can turn those processes from administrative headaches to well-oiled construction management workflows. Just ask ATG’s Voss.

"We needed to better serve our customer's tracking requests. So, we decided to make a switch,” Voss said during the webinar.

Partnering with the right technology provider, like Viewpoint, Voss noted, meant his company could take advantage of the cloud to become a data-driven contractor. “We are capturing all the relevant information,” Voss said. Prior to implementing ViewpointOne, data was not as reliable and quality projections were hard to come by. Now that’s all changed.

"When we are running an analysis (with ViewpointOne) we are always looking at an apples to apples comparison with a complete data set as opposed to non homogeneous types of data that don't report out correctly,” said ATG’s Wassman.

Easily retrieving data from a modern system has been generating quality reports for ATG, dramatically improving its project status meetings with clients and leading to really big payoffs for the organization. 

To find out how you can further raise the bar for your construction projects, listen to our recorded webinar, Raising the Bar at your Project Status Review Meeting. To find out more about how to greatly improve your construction data and project management processes, contact Viewpoint.