While the
construction industry has accelerated its adoption of technology over
the last few years, it continues to suffer the consequences of lagging
behind. But the good news is that there has been a very significant
shift in the construction industry towards mobile computing, and
technology in general, over the last two years. Tablets and smart phones
have lowered the entry bar into computing, allowing users to quickly
get up and running with a gentle learning curve. This increased adoption
has quickened the pace at which building companies have deployed mobile
technology that makes it possible for them to take advantage of
real-time communication and coordination between job sites and
centralized technology systems, saving them time, money and, in many
cases, their reputations.
The return on
investment for construction companies that deploy mobile computing
technology is considerable. Visibility into projects and the processes
that drive or derail them increases not only instantly but in most cases
exponentially. This is followed by an ability to better manage costs,
bid on future projects with a far greater degree of accuracy, and last
but not least, reduce or eliminate employee theft which connects back to
better cost management.
As mobile technology continues to become the default means of
communicating, those not making the move to mobile may appear out of
step with the rest of society. The Pew Research Center recently found
that 87 percent of adults in the U.S. own a cell phone and research on
the impact of visual networking applications conducted by Cisco shows
that grew by 81 percent in 2012.
These statistics prove what we already know that mobile technology is
an integral part of daily life, and it's becoming more so. People know
how to use mobile devices and the apps that work with them. Not
surprisingly, they take it for granted that the construction company
they've hired will take an integrated, automated approach to conveying
critical information about costs, scheduling, materials and other
project-related issues. In fact, potential clients are bound to react
with suspicion once they see that the company they're considering
conducts business with clipboards.
Improving Visibility for Construction Project Management
When it comes to missing deadlines and exceeding budgets, lack of
visibility is often the number one culprit. That's because it's almost
impossible to make a decision about what something will cost and how
long it will take without accurate information. One of the biggest
benefits of mobile technology is that it enables a view of how specific
things are trending before they become problematic.
By automating the tracking of how many work hours are being spent on
what jobs, as well as the rates of pay for each person on the crew, it's
easy to see, that an excavation that's only 30 percent complete has
already consumed 53 percent of the budget allocated to it and then
adjust accordingly.
Another benefit of improved visibility is that it helps better manage
unit costs. A foreman can use a mobile device to log where employees
are spending hours and therefore see where the problems are or, more
importantly, where they are likely to occur. With unit costs fluctuating
wildly based on the makeup of the crew, the ability to track onsite
enables the foreman to substitute more expensive crew members with those
whose hourly rate is lower on jobs that don't require the experience
level of more senior employees.
Accounting Manager, Priscilla Gutierrez with AUI Contractors, noted
an immediate benefit following the implementation of a mobile field to
office solution stating:
"One thing that came as a nice surprise was a boost in
productivity in regards to tracking and entering production units from
the field. By entering production units, we can get information out to
our supervisors easier. Within the application, there's a calculation
section that can be filled out with production units. Those units back
fill other fields and shows how many days and how many people a job
might take. It projects what a job might look like if you kept the same
number of people on a job and how many units you would produce at the
end of the week. This has been really helpful from a productivity
standpoint and the guys in the field love it because they can get real
time information right up front."
Improved Bidding for Construction Project Management
Accurate tracking in the field not only improves visibility and
accountability but it also enables construction companies to make more
accurate bids for future projects. In an industry known for cost
overruns, bids that align with final invoices are a competitive
advantage.
Solid and dependable integration is key to a mobile solution. With
solid integration in place, what happens on job sites is precisely
reflected in the company's main system that information is extracted
from for bidding. Examples of the kind of data that should be easily and
quickly accessible range from a simple view of what materials were
required for similar projects in the past to complete and accurate labor
costs. That task is often the most complex part of bid creation for
companies that still track hours and costs manually. That makes it
relatively easy for costs to be attributed to the incorrect jobs or
phases, either accidentally or as a way of reconciling disparate items
within the overall budget. Of course, while shifting costs from an item
that ran over budget to one that came in under its projection may solve a
short-term problem by making the project as a whole appear to have been
completed on budget, but in the long run the inaccuracy of data makes
it even more difficult to accurately estimate what a similar project
will cost a client. A properly integrated mobile solution all but
eliminates that problem.
Improved Cost Management for Construction Project Management
A good mobile solution will contribute significantly to a
construction company's ability to better manage its own costs and, at
the same time, pass the value on to its clients. Cutting administrative
costs is one of the areas where smart use of a good mobile solution can
have a measurable impact.
For many construction companies, mobile computing occurs when a crew
member scrawls his hours on the underside of a 2x4, snaps a picture of
it with his cell phone and then e-mails it to the main office, where the
time is entered into a spreadsheet. Time sheets are also transmitted to
the main office via a manually drafted e-mail message or written out on
paper and delivered by car, bike messenger or on foot. There are
obvious costs associated with these methods of delivery, primarily the
time the people involved are spending on it, but the repetition of
manual processes presents yet another opportunity for often costly
errors to occur.
Colleen Miller of River City Construction stated the following about
streamlining crew time capture after their adoption of a mobile field
solution:
"Our field supervisors would have to hand write on a time sheet
each employee, and then break out the hours by cost code. This would
sometimes cause them 2 hours a day just filling out time sheets on the
larger projects with 30 to 40 field employees. Before switching to a
mobile solution, it would take one employee 4 days to enter time for
contract jobs and that has been reduced to 2 hours. The other employee
that entered time and material hours, went from 3 days of entering time
down to 6 hours."
Reducing equipment costs is another area where a quality mobile
solution can earn its keep. Many construction companies complain about
renting a piece of equipment only to learn later that what they needed
was sitting idle at a job site less than five miles away. When all the
equipment is accounted for in a system that's easy to update from job
sites in real time, a project manager who needs a specific piece of
equipment can run a report to quickly determine if it's available before
renting one instead.
Theft Reduction
By providing a deep view of who is doing what, and when and where,
construction companies that deploy mobile solutions are able to
immediately eliminate the 3 to 5 percent of the payroll normally lost to
theft. That's because a quality mobile solution identifies the crew
member as part of the time keeping process. Identifying which crew
member is entering time can happen in numerous ways. One popular option
is the use of tablets with GPS stamping capabilities, which identify the
geographic location where the time is being entered, eliminating the
practice of crew members checking in for jobs from their own homes or
coffee shops. Other options include swiping ID cards and fingerprint
scans.
Summary
The bottom line is that gathering information from the field onsite
using today's smartphones, tablets and laptops, and then sending that
data to the back office for analysis, helps improve project management
all around and the completion of construction projects on time and on
budget.
