Collaboration Is Not a Four-Letter Word

If someone were to ask you what the most taboo word is in construction, what would your answer with? Maybe “transparency,” or “change order,” or even “technology”? While those are all great guesses, in our experience serving the construction industry for over twenty years, we’ve found that the most anxiety-inducing word in construction is collaboration.

two men arm wrestling Fierce competition often means greater aversion to collaboration.

Collaboration has frankly been missing from much of traditional construction practices. The industry is inherently competitive, thanks to commonplace procedures like hard bids in which contractors are pitted against one another typically to see who can come up with the lowest possible number for the proposed project. Construction professionals often hold innovations, ideas, and solutions to various industry challenges close to the chest for fear of these ideas—or their employees—being poached by other contractors.

But contrary to popular belief, collaboration is not a four-letter word, as our CTO Mike Boren puts it. In his 2018 address to Advancing Preconstruction attendees, "that if we share our ideas, if we discuss our process, our “secret sauce,” we’ll lose our competitive advantage over our competition, essentially dooming our company."

The Need to be “The First” or “The Only”

A big part of what drives the extreme aversion to industry-wide collaboration is the desire to be exclusive, to be seen as the expert, the pioneer. As Mike puts it: “If we were a bunch of scientists whose job it was to cure cancer, we may not be so apt to come into this room and put the puzzle pieces together, because we want to be the ones who figure it out first. We want to be the company to figure out the cure to cancer and to capitalize on it.”

four people fist bumping over a desk with notes and coffee When you can bounce ideas off other people, it's easier to refine messy first drafts.

But when we look back at some of humanity’s greatest scientific and technological breakthroughs—like the polio vaccine or going to the moon—they didn’t happen in a vacuum. They came about through the sharing of thoughts and ideas, of being able to refine theories through peer feedback. Why should construction be any different? Some of the most revolutionary solutions on the market today, like DESTINI Estimator, have come about as a direct result of multiple partnerships.

On a more practical level, though, how does collaboration benefit you? When you’re able to enter into more environments where you can bounce your problems directly off your peers, and where you can hear advice from more senior professionals who have already faced the roadblocks you might be experiencing, you save yourself and your company so much more time and reduce frustration.

Creating Standards

Equally as important, though, is that increased peer-to-peer collaboration also helps establish industry-wide standards, improving the quality of work for all parties involved. This desire for more uniform procedures has led to some pretty incredible innovations, like 5D BIM and our own DESTINI Bid Day.

So, as you head back out for another day at the office, we hope you’re reminded that other contractors aren’t necessarily the enemy, but rather potential partners to help you leverage success. In Mike’s words: “So, if anything, join us in the fight for curing stress and reducing heart disease, and don’t be afraid to show your cards.”

Collaboration is not a four-letter word.

Collaboration leads to better solutions. It leads to a better and more efficient work process. It leads to innovation. And, most importantly, collaboration makes preconstruction better.

Related Posts

screenshot of DESTINI Estimator cost history dashboard
What is Cost History? Cost history means being able to mine from your most accurate and consistent construction data in the future, so you have what you need to get the …
Read more
The Future of Model-Based Estimating It wasn’t even a year ago we were advocating for industry-wide standardization of model-based estimating—a concept, even then, that was fresh in the …
Read more
Beck Technology Gives to Movember Over 50 percent of men don’t like to talk about their health.
Read more