Good communication on the job site: Connect your teams and see everything

The construction site is where the money is being made or lost. In that sense, visibility is everything. No matter what, you should always be able to have a clear and complete view of your on-site progress against your plan.

Free ebook: Why WhatsApp and Excel aren’t enough for running complex construction projects

This is also the key to keeping your teams connected so that they can work better together and take ownership of their tasks ensuring successful project delivery and, more importantly, protection against commercial claims.

But this is where things get tricky. Enabling good communication, and by extension good collaboration on the field isn’t an overnight project. You need to implement the right tools and rely on the right processes so that you can link site progress to both the short and long-term planning and gain full control over your project.

Good as they are, tools like WhatsApp, Excel, and Word aren’t enough for running complex construction projects. All construction projects, regardless of their type or size, consist of many time-sensitive and delicate processes that can easily become chaotic due to the immense amount of data that is generated on the ground daily.

Using tools that are not built for construction can only add to the confusion and leave you stressed and disoriented in your effort to see where your project is at. A construction-specific tool can give you the context you need and become your eyes on the site at all times.

Like that, you can track progress, check quality against tasks in real time, and connect multiple contractors and trades from one place so that you can make better decisions and reduce the duration of your projects.

On top of that, you will have a great opportunity to improve and eventually standardise your processes. Needless to say how valuable this is if you are a residential contractor, for instance, and you want to ensure that homes are ready for handover on the promised date while feeling confident that they are built to the right quality.

It quickly becomes evident, then, that building good communication on the job site is the first step towards a successful project. In other words, it’s the first step for you to see everything on the field and deliver faster.

How construction-specific tools can improve site communication

By now, it should be clear that good communication goes through site visibility. When you see everything, you can stay in control, connect your teams with their tasks, and never miss a thing.

In an effort to help you plan better and finish your projects sooner, we present below the three main ways a construction-specific tool can improve collaboration between your teams and allow you to regain control:

1. You get shareable, on-site “live” view of the project

Do you spend endless hours phoning, messaging, or emailing people on site to get updates? Do you sometimes have to travel to the site to get answers or solve problems? By choosing a tool that is fit for construction (e.g. LetsBuild) you can gain full visibility of what is happening on site in real time, from your office.

Like that, you will have easy access to all the information you need to make critical decisions faster, collaborate with people on site to get the project moving forward and share and document everything.

Learn more: How to connect site to office without any struggle

That’s extremely powerful considering that almost every construction project relies on multiple subcontractors and stakeholders that need to be well-informed about the 3-6 weeks planning and the master schedule at all times.

In any other case, setbacks will sooner or later appear and they will have a serious effect on your project. The slightest delay made by a subcontractor in a single task can bring your project back for weeks or even months. Let alone the waste of materials and the increased inventory costs.

That’s why it’s always essential to keep your project in view and stay on track with each team’s progress at every stage. Because at the end of the day you want to use your time proactively and focus on the work you enjoy.

2. You document everything and reduce admin workload

Documenting what is happening on a construction project is key to success. Conflicts about claims may stop work on your project for weeks and cause thousands of Euros in budget overruns.

Thanks to a construction-specific tool like LetsBuild, you can instantly see if construction activities and checks are on track, and communicate back and forth with your site manager in real time. The audit trail records and documents everything so you share one single source of truth – one single source of proof.

You can retrieve critical information at the push of a button as all information is safely stored in one place. That saves weeks or even months of work as you will no longer have to waste your time trying to locate that one photo or email which will help you raise or respond to a claim.

This increased level of transparency and accountability will also push your subcontractors to take ownership of their tasks and stay on top of their game while you always know the truth and have peace of mind.

3.  You standardise your repetitive processes

Construction projects may vary in terms of size, budget, or purpose but at the end of the day, 80% of the processes are the same.

In that sense, having the same standard way of working across all sites is a valid option. It will take a lot of pressure off your shoulders, help you prevent mistakes, and flag critical problems at an early stage saving time and money.

Read also: Collaborative planning in construction – Get your teams to work seamlessly together

With a construction-specific tool, you get all your teams to follow the same pre-designed and standardised best-practice processes to eliminate errors, misunderstandings, and delays and get everyone looking in the same direction.

Because when you see more, you are able to improve the efficiency of your teams and deliver successful projects sooner. And more importantly, you can make good use of the collected feedback and improve future processes and projects.

Download our free ebook and unlock full visibility on the job site

Your quest for better site communication has just begun! You have a first idea of what needs to be done but you still miss the details that will allow you to reach your goal: see everything and deliver successful projects sooner.

The good news is that we can help you! All you have to do is download our ebook and see for yourself how LetsBuild can bring full visibility, complete control, and unique on-site insight over your repetitive processes.

So that you can set high quality standards and streamline collaboration between teams to reduce errors.

You can download our guide completely free just by clicking below: