A clear case for Technology Adoption.
The management of complex construction projects (and which one isn’t?) is ultimately about one thing: Managing Risk.
To successfully complete a project means: On time, on budget, with all stakeholders reasonably happy about the outcome, and most important of all, with everybody going home to their families at the end of the day, safe and sound.
Much is written about the technology that will “disrupt” (I hate that term by the way) the construction industry, and there are so many vendors that claim that they can make us better builders, when they themselves don’t have even a basic understanding of how the industry works.
We may have an intuitive understanding that yes, technology can help us reduce risk and improve outcomes, yet is hard to find specific examples to validate the claims.
As a builder turned technologist, I can also find it difficult to prove the case with generic demo data sets and hypothetical scenarios.
So when such a clear case as I am about to exhibit pops up, it is like a light bulb coming on over my head.
Submittal Review might not be anyone’s idea of a good time. Certainly, it is not a sexy topic among a sea of Virtual Reality, Drones, Digital Twins, and IoT.
OK, fine. What Submittals lack in sexiness they more than make up for in field-cred. Every design and building professional knows the importance of effectively managing the Submittal review process and knows the pain of keeping track of it all.
What may not be as obvious is the role that reviewing and approving Submittals plays in managing risk and liability on a project.
As Ken Slavens spells out in this recent article, there is some court-case precedent that Architects and Builders should keep in mind as they undertake Submittal management on their next project.
“The court concluded that the design team had negligently failed to ‘supervise the shop drawings’ under the contract and was the proximate cause of the accident.”
Does that quote get your attention? Read the article… there is precedent for liability on the GC side as well.
So yes, Submittals are important. And it is about more than making sure your plumbing fixtures are delivered on time.
So, what role does Digital Transformation play in this case?
Consider this real-world scenario from one of our customers. (Who shall remain nameless… we all do our best with what we have, I don’t judge.)
While helping get a Submittal Register set up in Builderbox, the topic comes up about what will go in it.
The Spec calls out over 600 items that need to be submitted for review. Good Lord! 600+ Submittals! (not that uncommon BTW)
Well, the Project Manager likes to have ONE submittal for each spec section. Is what they have always done before.
It is an attractive option, right? 20 Submittals is much easier to manage than 600, and the Architect doesn’t want to get 600 submittals anyway.
Just imagine it: 600 emails (many to the wrong person). 600 attachments (multiplied by different versions, duplicate files, etc.) Oh, the file management nightmare.
Well dear Architect, you are the one who wrote the spec and asked for those 600 items for review. The reality on the ground is that we need to deal with all of them.
Packaging everything relating to Steel into one Submittal may seem like an attractive option. Let us place the burden on the Subcontractor for including everything in the one submittal, and on the Design team for reviewing everything.
As builders, shifting risk is what we do best. Problem solved. Not quite.
There are still 600 items that need to be reviewed and approved, and now you have no visibility of the individual items. Worse yet, the Subcontractor and Architect now need to use separate systems or methodologies (their own Excel spreadsheet no doubt) to manage the individual items within each submittal.
As exhibited in Ken Slavens’ article mentioned before: That’s a whole lot of risk.
Here is the thing: It is 2020. Let us solve this problem with technology.
At this point I should state that Electronic is not the same thing as Digital. Yes, we have been speaking about e-mail, Excel, and PDFs. All electronic forms of communication.
You might as well be using the Pony Express though. Maybe faster ponies. Still point to point communication with completely manual management.
First, get rid of the Excel sheet. By using a cloud database system, Builderbox in our case (of course), what looks like a spreadsheet is much more powerful.
Now the 600 items can be sorted. Searched. Packaged together. And more importantly, Shared.
Each scope can be assigned to the responsible party, and the team whose expertise is needed to review and approve different submittals is made part of an automated workflow, so each piece goes where it needs to be, with no guesswork.
What looked like 600 items now looks like 24 to the Concrete Subcontractor. Like 61 to the HVAC Engineer, and like 26 to the Lighting Designer.
Better yet. Filter the view to “Ball in my court” and it looks like the 3 that you must worry about right now.
All while allowing the General Contractor oversight, and visibility of each individual item status, and who’s desk it is sitting at, should they need to go chasing it.
A query of the Readiness Index™ of the Schedule Activity instantly gives the field team insight on what they are missing for any given task during a look ahead meeting.
Any communication or context to why an item might not be approved yet is available to the team. Nothing is hiding in someone’s email, on in the wrong folder in a network you don’t have access to.
With any technology adoption you must not just ask, “how does it fit my process?” Perhaps more importantly, you must ask, “how can I improve my process with it?”.
Trying something new is risky.
Doing what you’ve always done is even riskier.
At Builderbox we are builders, and makers of the world’s most advanced Project Management and Production Control tools. We help companies and projects globally to digitize their processes so they can Communicate Effectively, Record Everything, and Make Data Driven Decisions for better outcomes.
