Industry News
July 11, 2022

10 Easy Ways to Improve Construction Efficiency on Your Project

Significant construction overruns in history are lessons for every construction firm. Cost overruns are the most critical risk to any construction project, large or small. Project costs can balloon out of control without accurate estimates and timely management. According to McKinsey, an astonishing 98% of megaprojects will incur more than 30% cost overruns. Moreover, 77% of large projects are at least 40% late, dragging average profitability down each year. 

Industry experts forecast growth in 2023, with greater technology adoption changing their fortunes to reduce delays. Construction technology and other efficiency tips are helping contractors move in the right direction to combat the challenges.

This article highlights ways for your leaders to boost your construction operation's much-needed efficiency. 

1. Improve your planning processes 

A majority of construction mistakes are made early in the planning stage. For example, if you don't do your homework on precisely how many cubic yards of concrete you need for a project, and your team realizes that you're short (during the build), significant schedule impacts will bring massive headaches.

Making collaboration the apex of pre-planning to address the necessary person-power, processes, communication, equipment, and materials before construction starts is the best way to avoid delays and cost increases. Another lightning rod to address is managing, approving, and executing change orders during the project lifecycle. Buy-in from all stakeholders is critical for success planning and execution. 

2. Utilize Construction Management Software

There are many fantastic software tools that can help you manage your project and teams. For example, construction management software can keep your teams organized, reduce paperwork, eliminate data silos, and stay connected, allowing you to focus on construction. 

Construction management software has several features, including bid management, invoicing, billing, contractor management, document management, daily reports, incident reporting, timekeeping, job scheduling, etc. You can use an all-in-one platform or best-of-breed integrated solutions depending on your preference. 

Mobile apps are also available to connect the field and office to handle tasks such as ordering materials, eliminating supplier paperwork, and managing inventories much more effectively. In addition, the connected cloud helps firms store everything, making it easier than ever to access data.

3. Implement BIM

BIM is sweeping the construction industry bringing improved collaboration and efficiency. It refers to creating digital representations of buildings before construction begins. These assets allow you to visualize a structure before spending money and committing to a schedule that may prove unrealistic. With 4D BIM, you can integrate the visual model with the project schedule to measure progress, and eliminate risks with incredible accuracy.  

Building Information Modeling can help designers to calculate the most efficient setup of pump sizes, water heater sizes, and other considerations post project completion, all based on how many occupants might go in and out of a building each day.

And if you're on a budget, there are many free and open-source BIM software tools you can play around with before committing to a more expensive BIM software.

4. Leverage Reality Capture and Analysis Tech for BIM

Avvir's reality analysis platform can reduce costly rework by detecting mistakes, taking immediate action, transforming your BIM into an official system of record (single source of truth), and bringing project insights to the next level with automated progress and earned value tracking.

5. Listen and encourage staff feedback

Your workers are on the front line. So if something goes wrong or could be going better, they'll know before you do. Veteran workers can help you identify pitfalls in your plan before implementation. Encourage them to participate early in the planning process to identify potential problems and stay in contact daily throughout the project. In addition, advanced technology like Avvir can help teams collaborate on an entirely new level.  

6. Invest in employee training programs

Training employees is crucial to maintaining efficiency, especially for construction field supervisors who manage principles and techniques to keep projects running smoothly.

By helping your staff learn crucial skills, your business can immediately realize efficiency gains on every project. For example, a field ops manager could use his or her new skills and technology to guide workers in installing steel beams more efficiently, enabling them to finish the work earlier and move on to the next phase.

7. Improve your communication workflows

If you aren't communicating with your team and stakeholders, that's a recipe for significant efficiency losses. So, aside from leveraging new technology, make yourself available to your crew so they know they can come to you with any problems. They also need to understand expectations as they progress and what's critical to accomplish. 

Communicating daily and weekly between your project leaders, managers, and staff to review goals and address worker feedback on their progress and concerns are mission critical. 

8. Create Performance goals and accountability

Performance measurements are a fantastic motivation tool for workers, especially when attached to specific rewards. Set precise performance measurements and consider linking a small financial bonus for each achievement.

It will also help your team's communication, improving efficiency more effectively with highly engaged workers working toward performance objectives

You can set various performance metrics, including being on time at the job site, finishing a task ahead of schedule, etc.  Performance metrics are helpful toward partners and colleagues, finishing work on time, taking the initiative to solve problems, and the overall quality of work.

9. Implement modular and prefabrication construction into your projects

Modular and prefabrication construction is a significant trend in construction. Technology has come a long way, so you've probably passed by many buildings and haven't noticed any difference from traditionally built buildings.

You can cut costs by using modular, prefabricated buildings, which can be installed much more quickly than a traditional structure or practice of stick building. Of course, you lose some customization, but that's not a concern for many building types.

10. Automation in construction

Automation is another emerging trend set to increase efficiency on construction job sites. Self-driving vehicles and drones performing repetitive tasks will help speed up the construction process, improving accuracy and productivity without job displacement. In addition, automation leaves workers free to focus on more critical specialized tasks while drones and robots take care of repetitive tasks, decreasing overhead and waste.

Need to improve construction efficiency?

Focus on solving issues, not finding them.

Men showing construction tool to group
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