Construction Document Information Management is central to productivity improvement.
Construction Document Information Management
2017, Cholakis, P. (Four BT) Moscardi, L. (Lemsys)
Imagine the ability to rapidly organize data and leverage mobile tools to enable access to, and the management of, actionable, standardized, defensible information… anytime and anywhere.
Streamlining Construction Document Information Management processes is an essential step towards improving productivity, quality, and overall value for all stakeholders. The process creates a competitive advantage for innovative construction companies.
A Construction Document Management System must allow the visualization of the most common files used in the construction industry such as detailed line item construction cost estimates, required forms, drawings and BIM models.
Time spent looking for the right information accounts for approximately 13% of an employee’s time each and every week. Up to $10,000, or more, is be wasted annually, per employee, just on looking for the right information. This does not nclude the cost of not finding the correct information in a timely manner, or using the wrong information.
In the construction industry companies the situation if far worse. It’s not usual for project managers to spend 30% of their time searching for the information needed to carry out their activities within e-mail, paper documents/paper binders, and digital files that are not shared or centrally located.
In addition, by 2020 digital information will be increased by 30 times. Survival for many AECOO (Architecture-Engineering-Construction-Owner-Operation) will require the adoption of information management tools expressly designed for LEAN collaborative processes and/or workflows.
Appropriate, current, and actionable digital document must be available to participants and stakeholders.
Construction Document Information Management and LEAN Construction Delivery are key focal areas to be addressed by AECOO organizations. Real transformation is required, thus a successful change management programs must be supports by everyone. Only those that are successful this effort will achieve increased business productivity and efficiency, while reducing operating costs.
Operating separately, isolated from the value chain, is rapidly becoming unsustainable.
Where to start?
Here are a few essential points to consider when planning a collaborative documents and LEAN construction delivery strategy.
- Cloud Access
- Efficient and varied search tools
- Document versions and revision management
- User access permissions and privileges management
- Viewers for common files used
- Collaboration among team members
- Management and tracking of requests for changes/issues found in documents
- Common industry standard terms and definitions – Common Data Environment, CDE
- Standardized data architecture (CSI MasterFormat, Uniformat, Omniclass) – – Common Data Environment, CDE
- Integration of LEAN Construction Delivery Methods and Workflows (Integrated Project Delivery, IPD, Job Order Contracting, JOC)
- Consideration of Life-cycle Management of the Built Environment and Asset Total Cost of Ownership
The 4BT-CE Cloud Estimating & Building in Cloud Solution is an example of a framework expressly designed to meet the needs of the AECOO community to share and manage information of a building as well as ensuring greater efficiency in team activities. Current, actionable, and commonly formatted information is available to all team members (internal and external) anywhere, anytime and from any device (PC, Tablet or Smartphone).
A free trial is available, and costs are as low as $26.90/month per unlimited number of concurrent users.