buildingblog

It is in your pocket.

Steve Jobs introduced the world to the iPhone in 2007. Since then, the convenience of mobile web interaction has been pushing the desktop closer and closer to the realm of nostalgia. 

When we can anticipate changes to technology, we should adapt practices that leave us most prepared. 

So, what is your mobile strategy?

A recent Constructech editorial asked this very question. Here are the takeaways, with some of our own advice on how to develop a mobile strategy.

Remember. It is all about data

Data monitoring is the key value of mobile technology for construction companies. Analyzing data allows you to improve your safety, estimating, and project management by identifying inefficiencies. Understand your processes so you can see what data will be useful for you.

Research what meets your needs

Once you know the processes you can improve, the only way to know what is best for you is to research. Every application is different. Some apps do different components of the construction process. Some apps do every component differently. Only by doing your research can you identify the app or apps that meet your needs.

Implement with everything you have

"Microsoft Internet Explorer contains a use-after-free vulnerability, which can allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system."

-Homeland Security

What does this mean if you use Internet Explorer? Hackers can exploit a Flash Player bug in your internet browser that allows them to control your computer. 

FireEye Research Labs, a California internet security software company, picked up on the bug this weekend. Hackers exploiting the bug call their campaign "Operational Clandestine Fox"

You spoke. We listened.

Simplified navigation

The new BuildingBlok Dashboard lets you get to work faster than ever. With a sleek and intuitive design, customers both old and new can quickly jump into a project, their Network Profile, All Files, or our brand-new Inbox. Simple is beautiful.

  Favorite projects

Juggling too many projects at once? Favorite your recent projects so you can focus on what needs to get done today. Not all projects are created equal. You determine what's important for you. 

  One Inbox. All Documents

"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

-Benjamin Franklin

For some people, these two inevitable parts of life may not seem so different. Here is how we make our customers' lives easier when Tax Day rolls around.

1) Time sheets and Mancount

Know exactly how many hours your team works each week. Set your own Cost Codes and Rates for each of your workers so you can calculate Regular Time and Over Time pay on a weekly basis. You can also track the daily Mancount on site by using our Daily Report.

2) Project Budgeting

Our Current Summary Report will show you all Pending and Approved Change Orders, your percent complete and balance to finish on all contracts, as well as your Change from Budget. Setting up your budget is as simple as cutting and pasting from an Excel document. We do all the tracking for you.

3) Invoices and Payment Applications

Create and track all of your project invoices in one centralized location. Invite on your subcontractors so they can fill out a Schedule of Values for their contracts. Once a month, we will remind them with an email to enter their Present Application. All you have to do is click approve.

Very important.

This is what we learned from a recent article. Here are two excerpts and a chart. 

"...simplicity and accessibility are key when marketing technology to construction firms. This points to smartphone apps that don’t require training to use and cloud services that allow for easy accessibility to information by all parties involved in a construction project, from the firm’s employees to the property manager."

"Technology can also provide construction firms with secure documentation and a paper trail for compliance with the rules and regulations that come with the business. But the ultimate convincer is that technology saves time and adds value to construction projects by allowing them to proceed more smoothly"

"Change is good. It's certainly necessary...Create the vision, adapt to change, and put more tools in your toolbox."

-Dan Kumm, President of Bluescope North America

Do you remember pagers?

At the Butler Manufacturing Conference, Dan Kumm, told a story about his boss paging him while working on-site, and then driving 15 minutes to a pay phone to call him back.

We considered pagers the be-all and end-all for staying connected. Cell phones antiquated the pager and the smart phone soon replaced the cell phone.

In the evolution of communication, we adjust our lives and businesses to adapt to new technologies. Refusing to ditch the pager for a smartphone would make it difficult to keep up with these inevitable changes. When it comes to new business technologies, adapting to change can be the difference between competing and going out of business.

Get the ball rolling faster than ever

When people want something, they want it right away. However, construction is a process full of red-tape, delays and waiting on information from other people. We completely redesigned the project setup process to make your construction life even easier.  We distilled down project setup to filling in a simple excel-like spreadsheet with your project budget.  Even more we installed brand new functionality that allows the customer to COPY AND PASTE data from Excel into the BuildingBlok preliminary budget spreadsheet.

Cut and paste your contract names from an excel spreadsheet to begin setting up your budget. Once you assign those contracts to companies, those subcontractors can begin creating and submitting RFIs and submittals.

Next, paste in contract values to open our full suite of financial construction documents. Doing so will allow the subcontractors to create invoices, payment applications, and change orders - all of which are tracked in the system so you can see your project financial picture in real time.

Construction is hard work. Setting up your project and getting started should be quick and easy. Copy and paste your budget, assign your contracts, and let your subcontractor create construction documents IN the system instead of EMAILING or MAILING you their documents, and you entering them in a tracking system. 

“The most important aspects of financial management for the small construction industry contractor are bookkeeping, budgeting and cost accounting, said Vancouver accountant Lionel Raber” - Journal of Commerce

Small-business owners who lack the financial skills of their larger peers can end up paying the price for poor management. 

BuildingBlok helps you track and reduce your financial management errors these three ways.

1) Bookkeeping

BuildingBlok allows you to track cost changes in real-time, automatically keeping your books up-to-date. All Change Orders are stored in the Change Order Log. There is no need to manually update Excel spreadsheets. Everyone collaborates on the same system and has access to document logs, reducing the risk of discrepancies caused by human-error. 

2) Budgeting

Every user can track his/her original budget and any changes that accrue on the project. General contractors, subcontractors, owners, et cetera have every piece of financial information available at their fingertips. Additionally, the Payment Application feature allows you to monitor progress towards completion and invoice for work completed. BuildingBlok's permission settings guarantee that all financial information is confidential and appears only for the users who need it. 

3) Cost Accounting

BuildingBlok's Cost Accounting Report reflects the most current financial information. The report updates automatically and in real-time, allowing you to view how pending and approved change orders affect your cost-to-complete and change from original budget. Additionally, the Actual Cost Summary Report relays committed and uncommitted costs so that you can see your Projected Cost and Projected Over/Under [from original budget].

A simple lack of communication and oversight during the construction process can cause much larger problems.

A prime example is C&C Companies, who was working on an 11-year construction project of Binghamton-Johnson City Joint Sewage Treatment Plant when 100 feet of a concrete divider collapsed.

“More than half a million gallons of sewage and wastewater poured into the Susquehanna River, rendering Broome County’s major sewage treatment plant an economic and environmental disaster that persists today,” pressconnects.com describes.

Ten months before the collapse, the plant Superintendent Cathy Aingworth sent out photos and requests for information to chairman of the company at the time, the City Director of Public Services, and 18 elected officials who co-owned the sewage plant. A punch list was found to contain leaks in the walls prior to the incident as well. Yet nothing was done. The project repair will cost the city and taxpayers over $160 million with estimated completion in 2017. Not to mention, the environmental impact is still a major problem.

“The collapse revealed systemic problems and a general lack of accountability in the operations of the plant.”

Lawsuits were filed. Construction managers and general contractors were blamed for inefficient management, and public officials were cited for lack of oversight.

Strides towards the future are being made with the sewage plant, but it is important to realize how important communication and clear oversight of a project is. BuildingBlok aids the construction management process with the hope that problems like this will never occur.

BuildingBlok provides transparency and accountability for all parties involved on a project, saving companies both time and money. BuildingBlok will alert all users who need to take an action on a document, for example RFIs, via email and the BuildingBlok site. Timestamps denote when documents are created, assigned, and how many days they’re left outstanding, showing exactly where problems and time lapses occur. 

"The use of technology in the construction industry is evolving, moving from traditional on-premise software to on-the-go applications. Many of the common software packages for the construction industry are now being moved to a browser-based application."

- Construtech

Construction has always been a mobile industry. Workers complete punch-lists, inspections, and surveys on site, while coordinating this information with their office. With the invention of the desktop computer, paper, pen, and other ‘mobile’ tools of the old way became time-intensive and error-prone. Construction companies adopted management softwares, allowing them to store and manage project information on their office Desktops.

As mobile technology becomes more prominent and powerful, storing a software on your computer moves closer and closer towards extinction. Construction is evolving towards on-the-go applications, saving companies expensive servers by pushing workers to mobile and web-based applications. On a cloud application, everyone can access their project from anywhere, and collaborate in one centralized location.

How does transparency translate to savings? At Real Share Apartments 2013, a panel of construction industry experts discussed strategies for cost management. These thought-leaders identified poor communication as the number one cause of budget and timeline issues.

The panel identified two ways transparency creates real savings.

1) Early and accurate updates on the logistics of timing creates the best projects.

2) Communication between contractors and architects is essential in predicting and understanding project costs.

Earlier this month, BuildingBlok updated the way your project dashboard is organized. Now, BuildingBlok is happy to offer you a redesigned company dashboard. When you log into BuildingBlok you see an organized overview, including tasks assigned to you and outstanding issues. There is also new information on the dashboard including savings and analytics and company information. We believe this update will allow you to immediately see how your projects are progressing as soon as you log in.

Happy October! This month we have added new features to our website including a global calendar and a new project dashboard. 

Global Calendar

The global calendar helps you stay organized. All of your construction tasks will appear on the calendar and are color-coded based on status. For example, overdue tasks are colored red. You can filter by individual project tasks or view all project tasks together. You can also select whether you would like to see your tasks for a specific day, week, month, or customized period of time. 

Project Dashboard

When you select a specific project, we have added a new dashboard to give you even more information. You will not only see tasks assigned to you, but now you will also see a variety of other information including daily report, financial info, outstanding issues and a recent history. We have even added a savings breakdown so you can see how much money YOUR company has saved on each project!

BuildingBlok is always working to improve organization, transparency and accountability for project management and we believe these new updates will do just that.

A change is occurring in the construction industry and people are beginning to recognize it.

Construction firms are replacing paper with online solutions. These solutions are making it simple to ditch previously inconvenient ways and switch to faster and more efficient means of managing business. 

Online solutions, such as BuildingBlok, are revolutionizing the construction industry by putting construction projects on a system that eliminates the need to mail, ship, and fax documents, update files, and manually calculate financial information. BuildingBlok is a centralized platform for managing the entirety of a construction project anywhere with an Internet connection, whether it is on a tablet or cell phone in the field, or a computer in the office. Everyone involved on a project stays updated in real time, moving the process smoothly along. Even when an Internet connection is not readily available, BuildingBlok's mobile application for tablets and cell phones will still record and log information that will update as soon as an Internet connection is reached. 

A professor at Boise State University is already teaching his construction management class to adapt to new technology in preparation for the future. Professor Casey Cline is teaching his class to use iPads to manage projects, which is becoming more prevalent for construction workers currently in the field.

While not all of the construction industry has fully adopted this new technology, Professor Cline and others alike are teaching generations to come the efficiency of technology and hopefully instilling the ways of online solutions into students so that one day the construction industry will be fully adapted and completely paperless.

  Create And Respond To Punchlists On The Go 

BuildingBlok's mobile update now gives you the ability to create and respond to punchlist items from the field. Simply create a punchlist item, add relevant information, and add photos. Punchlist items are immediately sent to assigned users to complete. Quick, easy, and time saving! 

According to a recent article published on Government Security News magazine, paper-based industries, such as construction, highly benefit from the use of mobile solutions.

“Mobile solutions, i.e. software for PDAs and smartphones, have an enormous potential to improve efficiency and save big money for companies that today rely on time-consuming paper-based solutions. Industries such as fire safety, security, electrical, telecom, data, energy, power, construction, logistics, and heating/ventilation/cooling, have much to gain by adapting modern mobile business solutions for their work forces.”

We save our customers from printing thousands of pages everyday. Learn about the top 5 documents construction companies submit, and how we help you manage them. 

5) Requests for Information (RFIs) - 7%

Quick movement of information is critical to completing a project on time. Waiting for RFI approval can be a serious bottleneck in workflow, and a headache for all parties involved. Our mobile app allows you to submit and approve RFIs on the fly, getting your job done quicker.

4) Budget Items - 10%

When a user submits a change order or payment application, our cost accounting reports automatically update for you. With our cloud-based app, there is no need to cross-reference multiple Excel sheets, and no more human error.

3) Daily Reports - 14%

Your team will automatically receive an email notification with our daily report. Keep track of your mancount, weather, and any photos taken in the field through our mobile app.

2) Submittals - 21%

Your subcontractors and architects need to be on the same page in the building process. Submittals can pile up quickly, but you can easily track them with our online submittal log. Quickly know who approved which submittal, for what contract, and when.

1) Drawings & Specifications - 26%

These massive files need to be seen by everyone, but often times take up a ton of space on your server or email. With our filemanager, you no longer need to worry about file size or speed of download. We will store it for you in one centralized location.