Lack of Reliable Information Is the Top Culprit of Poor Productivity

More often than not, successful completion of a construction project hinges on a productive workforce firing on all cylinders from groundbreaking to handover. How efficiently your team can work will have a direct impact on a project’s budget, schedule, and even your profit margins.

The loss of productivity can happen in all kinds of ways, and it sometimes goes unnoticed until its impact is felt. It’s estimated that construction workers lose nearly two full working days per week spending time on non-productive activities, like chasing down project information, dealing with mistakes, and rework.  

Sometimes the information is where it needs to be, but it’s no longer up to date or accurate, further exacerbating the issue. If the weak link is in the information chain, failing to address it makes a project significantly more susceptible to productivity drain, which can result in a less-than-desirable outcome.

Specialty Contractors’ Biggest Productivity Pain Points

Outdated technology, inefficient processes, and poor communication are three of the biggest reasons teams and resources are not put to their best use. Giving accurate information to the people who need it is the surest way to avoid costly rework or other productivity issues. Unfortunately, far too often, contractors neglect to prioritize this area.

As a result, you get projects where key pieces of information are excessively siloed, hard to find, and may not even be reliable. The disconnected nature of these data silos means even when a worker can get their hands on the information they were looking for, there’s no guarantee it’s any good.

Spreadsheets, for better or worse, are still nearly universally used in construction. However, they can be burdensome to update and can easily fall out of date if they aren’t meticulously updated. This means instead of focusing on critical items like budget and schedule; project managers are often forced to spend their time manually entering texts, photos, and emails from the field into these static documents.

The lack of connected, reliable information on many job sites results in unnecessary duplication and wasted effort.

There’s a lot of time wasted double- and triple-checking documents and schedules. Or even worse, they’re working off the wrong drawings because they haven’t been updated.

You often hear the story about the superintendent driving to the office to pick up printed drawings, and by the time they get back to the job site, the drawings have been updated.

How Technology is Helping Specialty Contractors Improve Productivity

Specialty contractors need the right combination of tools, insights, training, and controls to maximize productivity, both in the field and the office.

A cloud-based project management solution like Procore goes a long way to improve information flow. By breaking data out of silos and bringing it all together on a single connected platform, teams are able to access the project data they need to be successful. This one change empowers teams to seamlessly document any issues and relay information that could impact productivity.

Connecting teams and data eliminates all kinds of time-consuming, manual processes that erode productivity and result in hard-to-find, inaccurate information. Connectivity not only makes it easy to store, share, and view project data from anywhere, but it ensures the information is consistently available and reliably accurate. Rather than risking working off the wrong plans, manually entering redundant information, or spending valuable time double-checking a hand-written note on a drawing, workers will be certain what they are seeing is the most accurate, up-to-date information available.

Standardizing these processes allows a business to ramp up its employees more quickly as well as create predictable future performance. Additionally, teams are better aligned so they’re approaching things the same way from project to project.

Stop Poor Productivity in its Tracks

You wouldn’t send workers to a job site without their tools, but teams are frequently asked to do their jobs with little to no ability to effectively collaborate, communicate, or document. This creates an environment ripe for budget- or schedule-busting inefficiencies to rear their ugly heads.

To stop poor productivity in its tracks, small business specialty contractors need to equip their teams with the tools and technologies that help them perform their work as error-free as possible.

For more information about how to regain control over your business’ productivity and learn more about how Procore’s tracking tools can help improve your bottom line, download our Profit Through Productivity infographic.