Connex helps drive better performance for contractors
The construction industry employs about 7% of the world’s working-age population and is one of the world economy’s largest sectors, yet the construction sector has been far slower than other industries in adapting to and adopting new technological innovations. Accordingly, this has caused its labor productivity to stagnate.
Persistent fragmentation of the industry, inadequate collaboration among teams, rising material and labor costs, increased competition, and shrinking profit margins, to name just a few, are some of the major cases for this stagnation of productivity.
Digital technology such as building information modeling (BIM) and project management software are tools, however, that construction firms use to bolster productivity. Research by the McKinsey Global Institute indicates that digital transformation can result in productivity gains of around 15% and a reduction of costs by up to 6%.
Three main factors that are hurting construction project performance:
1. Profit loss from inadequate planning
Project planning without comprehensive collaborative processes causes errors, delays and profit loss. For example, time wasted by having to wait on materials and supplies to be delivered or for prior work to be completed. It is therefore critical in a project to have transparency and real-time overview of the project. This will give a clear perspective of your time, manpower and materials and help estimate obstacles, gaps and delays in your construction projects.
2. Working in silos & decision making with incomplete data
Information silos are extremely common in industries and companies with complex processes that remain manual. Contractors may have different groups pursuing different kinds of work and teams may work in diverse location using multiple platforms, causing information silos and resulting delays, rework and fragmented collaboration. Working in silos makes it a challenge to meet common goals and is a major contributor to the lack of improvement in productivity levels over the years.
3. Lack of collaboration and communication
When things go wrong in a project, it is almost always due to a communication breakdown along the way. Collaboration refers to the process of working together to achieve a common goal. In the construction business, collaboration ensures that all resources, communication, and workflows are always striving towards the same goal. For any construction project to be successful, collaboration between multiple stakeholders is a must.
How Connex can elevate the productivity of construction projects for contractors? Here are 3 ways:
1) Digitize your construction processes: Integrate 3D design material with your workflows
With BIM models integrated into workflows, you can manage the entire project lifecycle from start to end – from planning, over design and to construction. You have a wide range of pre-defined workflows in Connex, and you can easily customize your own to fit exactly your project’s need and company standards.
Connex is the platform that gathers all tasks in one place. You have direct access to your BIM model and can create tasks directly. In Connex you can also link tasks in a single project and across projects which creates traceability and enables you to follow the derived consequences of, for example, changes in which time, finance, safety and/or quality are affected. Project stakeholders can access and keep track of tasks, see exactly where the information is in the BIM model and thereby minimize the risk for errors, misunderstandings, and misalignment. Through interactive dashboards you get a complete overview of your entire project portfolio. The interactive dashboards help you identify tasks or other critical issues that are likely to affect the design, schedule, or economy of your projects.
2. Secure the future of your data and gain data-driven insights
For contractors, accurate and up-to-date information is a particularly acute challenge. With a centralized platform that captures data from various sources and updates them in real time, stakeholders can work in full confidence, knowing the data they are using is reliable and up to date. This makes a big different as your team and project list continue to grow. With just one click you can easily generate and extract reports that you can share with other project participants. Bring the reports to construction meeting or coordination meetings and use data-driven insights to help you uncover every detail of your project.
With Connex we do not believe in just adding more point solutions and software silos to the already very fragmented solution landscape. Therefore, we have chosen to develop the entire Connex platform using open APIs, so you can secure the future of your data. You can use our open APIs to import data in to Connex or export data from Connex into an external system or application. Our open APIs give you the flexibility to develop your own applications. It simplifies the design, administration and use, and provide opportunities for innovation.
3. Collaborate seamlessly throughout project lifecycle
The construction project’s success relies heavily on effective collaboration among all stakeholders. With Connex contractors can manage their entire team from one place throughout the project lifecycle, ensuring that everyone is on the same page. Since the whole team is working on ‘one single source of truth’, information silos are eliminated, and communication is significantly improved. Connex provide more efficient and transparent communication processes between all project participants with communication channels. You can create multiple channels to support the communication and workflows. For example, one channel for the contractual project organization, one for disciplines, one for specific project stakeholders etc. The ability to share information, changes, and updates instantly empowers teams to complete all aspects of every project more quickly while improving quality.
We are quickly reaching the point where technology is going to be a critical component of all construction projects. In a fiercely competitive sector like construction, it is an absolute must to invest in project management software solution that will help you build faster, better, and smarter.
Interested in elevating the efficiency of your construction business?