How can Construction Operations Managers Manage Project Documents?
The construction industry revolves around hundreds of contracts, including cost-plus, design-build, unit price contracts, and more. Managing documents such as daily reports, design models, proposals, and punch lists also present challenges.
These documents are essential to teamwork and designing systems to control processes better. However, providing accessibility to team members can create confusion, resulting in inconsistent use of documents, rendering them non-compliant.
Manual handling of documents by COMs can lead to significant challenges, such as spending a lot of time creating, distributing, and managing project documents.
This can lead to miscommunication and project delays, difficulties in accessing information when needed, and an increased risk of losing or damaging documents.
Therefore, using integrated, cloud-based software for documents can improve the efficiency and productivity of COMs and other team members.
According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the global construction document management software market is expected to grow from USD 4.9 billion in 2020 to USD 9.1 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 13.0% during the forecast period.
Investing in reliable project management software for contractors that thoroughly manages documents is crucial.
Let's delve deeper into this blog to understand how to manage construction project documents with the right software.
1. Centralized Database
Using an integrated centralized database platform empowers operations managers to improve their workflow by accessing data anytime, anywhere.
It functions as a single source of truth for operations managers, storing all project documents and ensuring that team members have access to the latest versions of documents.
You can add as many members as you want to improve data accessibility and avoid any kind of blockages or confusion.
2. Seamless Communication
According to a podcast, the CEO of a renowned company, Marsh, said, "What you need to have is the technology that starts to build the culture of communication, starts getting people talking."
A digital document management system will enable operations managers to collaborate with teams in real-time. Whether you are on-site or in the office, stay connected in every phase of the project.
By staying on the same page with their team, operations managers can focus on managerial tasks and ensure the timely delivery of construction projects.
3. Automated Workflows
With robust document management software, operations managers (COMs) can easily automate workflow, save time, resource effort, and money.
Construction projects are complex, but automated workflow resolves that by determining bottlenecks and inefficiencies. By reducing human effort, you will see fewer errors and inconsistencies.
Your team will have clarity on jobs that need to be done because automated workflow brings transparency to the process.
4. Improves Security
Cloud-based document management software offers better security than any other on-premise software. It offers end-to-end encrypted files that prevent any kind of vulnerabilities.
As an operations manager, you will have complete control over the accessibility of documents as you get the power to restrict team members.
Moreover, you can keep a data backup so that recovery becomes easy because we all know data is vulnerable to online malicious attacks. Thus, you can leverage better data security for your construction projects.
5. Version Control
Digital document management systems offer version control, allowing team members to track document changes and maintain a clear record of history.
This ensures complete transparency and better collaboration among the team members. Everyone will have a clear understanding of tasks and project status, avoiding project delays.
6. Easy Analytical and Reporting
Document management software is capable of providing deep insights into project progress, financial reports, and contracts.
Operations managers (COMs) can also use templates of reports to share with top-level management related to construction projects.
COMs can share their feedback for improvements with the help of analytics and make data-driven decisions if needed.
Bottom Line
If your team is already using robust project management software for contractors to manage documents, but it is not customized to your needs, it’s time to switch.
Experts suggest that great cloud-based software that manages documents can do three things for your construction business:
- Ease document research
- Organize everything seamlessly
- Empower sharing of documents
And this is where ProjectPro comes into play. ProjectPro is an integrated cloud-based software powered by Microsoft Dynamics Business Central that efficiently streamlines document management.
To learn how it works, book a demo, and our experts will provide a guided tour of the software.