Building Complexity
Modern construction projects are often more complex requiring advanced technology and detailed planning and attention to every design aspect. This level of sophistication can increase costs and extend project deadlines and timelines.
Tighter Deadlines
There is an increase in pressure around timeliness when completing projects. This can lead to higher costs due to accelerated timelines, possible reductions in quality, and higher labor expenses.
Environmental Factors
The rising expectations for construction projects to be environmentally friendly and use sustainable design only means additional costs for eco-friendly materials and technology. Not to mention increased compliance with stricter environmental regulations.
Labor Concerns
A project’s timeline and overall profitability is significantly impacted by issues related to labor. Especially during shortages of skilled workers, increased labor costs, and workforce management.
These factors collectively influence how construction projects are planned and executed. This often leads to increased costs and potentially reduced profitability.
We’ve been able to get work accomplished faster and do more estimates. If we can streamline the workflow for a single project, that means we can add more projects to the roster, and in this time we’re in right now that has been essential.
$31.3 billion of project rework is caused by poor project data and miscommunication
Yet, bad data and lack of communication are still the primary culprits of rework and budget and deadline overruns. Over half of construction rework is due to bad data and poor communication. Even though the technology is available that allows construction teams to identify and eliminate risk, only one-third of construction firms are using data to drive better project decisions. Almost 100% of construction data collected isn’t used
Rework not only costs you your bottom line but inefficient processes also directly impact productivity and profitability: over 14 hours a week is spent wasted on non-productive work like trying to find information (that may not even exist or is accessible), looking for and fixing errors, and handling miscommunication.
Construction data is collected during the entire lifecycle of a project. The problem is capturing that data and storing it in one single location accessible to everyone on the team.
Use this data to better predict where risk occurs in a project and inform your decisions. The best way to use this data is during the preconstruction phase of the project.
Identifying Risk During the Preconstruction Phase
In construction we manage cost, quality, time, and safety risks.
Costs include:
- Financial health of the business
- Employee retention
- Company reputation and future opportunities
It is important that our overhead costs don’t bloat our general conditions or require a higher fee. When you assume cost risks, you are also putting your company reputation at stake. It is highly likely that if an estimate or building runs significantly over budget you probably won’t get the project from the owner even if you do have the lowest possible price.
Poor project quality leads to negative employee retention. Bonuses are typically tied to the success of a project and if it underperforms and you don’t profit from the project, employee bonuses are at risk and your best precon professionals will leave.
Quality
Often, people think quality is the designer or engineer’s responsibility; however, within construction we both inherent and take on risk. The architect tends to move the risk onto the preconstruction department. How can you perform takeoff if you don’t trust the drawings?
Time
Not only are there contractual penalties for not delivering a project on time, but we also experience the opportunity cost associated with late delivery.
Safety
As an industry we have people’s lives in our hands, and no one wants a death or injury to occur in the field.
The likelihood that risk is introduced is highest earlier in the life of a project and if not caught early on it is likely going to result in an issue in the field. Catching problems later costs more and pushes timelines.
How to Mitigate Risk in Preconstruction
It’s astonishing how many companies fail to capture data effectively. As an industry, we tend to approach every project as if we’ve never completed a similar project before. This leads us to focus primarily on deliverables and when we run out of time to finalize these deliverables properly, it increases the gaps between different phases of the construction project.
We should be harnessing the data captured from previous projects and applying it to similar projects to help cut back on time spent creating deliverables. That time saved should be used to make better project decisions based on leveraging our construction data.
The goal of preconstruction is to minimize the risk factors of construction. Traditionally, estimators are dedicated to duplicating and manually transferring information while counting and measuring and repeating that cycle as the design develops.
Stewart says, “At the end of the schematic phase, instead of adjusting the data based on changes, we might redo a complete takeoff, and this repetition eats up time. As an industry, we spend a lot of time on low value activities.”
Rather than spending that time repeating the same tasks, implementing technology that does it for you, the way you want it done the first time, and capturing that data and using it to drive the project forward, you can in return focus on high value activities that will improve the quality of the building.
The risk of introducing errors to projects comes from putting our focus in too many areas at the same time. When it comes to 2D and 3D takeoff, cost history, bid leveling, and estimating, which we know are the fundamentals of preconstruction, we tend to employ four to ten different tools to complete these tasks which often don't interoperate the data. This requires us to then begin manually transferring the data, which is what introduces the risk of errors.
Manual data handling undermines efforts to mitigate risks associated with cost, time, quantity, and safety.
In essence, we should be addressing the idea of integrating preconstruction solutions. This involves minimizing the number of tools used, reducing manual data entry, and automating data transfer from GMP to the field. By focusing on high-value activities and improving our approach to data management, we can enhance our preconstruction processes.
The process of standardizing data capturing and minimizing tool fragmentation will help us make better informed decisions, reduce risk, and ultimately deliver higher quality and more importantly, safer projects.
Improving preconstruction practices does not require you to implement more to your team’s efforts than they already have. It’s quite the opposite. By integrating solutions and automating the capturing of comprehensive data throughout the project lifecycle, this will help mitigate risks and enhance project quality and profitability.
Not only will you get rid of all the unnecessary programs that don’t fulfill your project development and don’t integrate with one another, but you will be able to centralize your data and workflow regardless of your location, and essentially have more time to take on other projects and most importantly, reduce risk and improve project development and success.
And this all starts with capturing data from the beginning of a project and at every major milestone rather than just capturing deliverables. And then using that data to benchmark and as an industry we can make better and more informed preconstruction decisions that reduce the risks of cost, time, quality, and ultimately deliver a safer project to the field that meets all our customers’ needs.