4 Signs Your Team Needs Construction Automation Software and How It Can Help

Construction automation – Being a construction manager is challenging work. With tons of contractors and sub-contractors often coming and going, ensuring everyone is working according to your company’s standards can be challenging. More importantly, construction managers must keep team members on budget and schedule. For the most part, they are messy, inefficient, and a bit unpredictable. And while we might joke that these processes are unique and complex, the reality is that construction automation software can streamline them easily.

Construction Automation Software help organizations manage contractors and subcontractors, track their finances and accounting, and streamline operations. It provides comprehensive planning, project control, cost, and revenue estimation solutions. Using Construction Automation Software is a viable solution for maintaining a competitive edge. If you decide to use this software, you will need the construction software pricing scheme to help you figure out how much it will cost. 

In this blog, we will briefly discuss four signs your team needs construction automation software for their project and how construction software can help them.

Also Read: Maintaining Employee Safety to Increase Productivity in the Construction Business

Lack of Communication Between Field and Office Workers

To ensure a job is finished as planned, construction project managers and other task administrators require continuous, effective communication. Collaboration is not just a business buzzword in the home-building industry. It is the key to success.

Here is what it looks like when it breaks down:

• When issues arise, project owners are not automatically notified.
• You cannot quickly respond to client inquiries regarding the status of their project.
• Field workers must keep calling the office to access drawings or details.
• Hours are spent each week racing from job site to job site to check in.

Projects Are Taking Longer Than Expected or Need to Catch Up on Deadlines

Every project depends on its ability to meet deadlines. When it takes days to start a project or your team messes around with excel, valuable time is well-spent. And right now, when demand is high, every second matters. Has anyone on your team encountered something like this before?

• Planning a new project always requires starting from scratch.
• There is no flexibility built into schedules to accommodate delays and rework.
• Finding and booking subs based on their skill level and availability is a manual process.

Disorganized Job Details

The disadvantage of pen and paper is that multiple persons in multiple locations cannot access it. Even in the most well-organized file folders, you can’t easily search by typing in keywords. Here is evidence that missing documents or uncertainty about versions could be hindering your progress:

• You spend hours every week looking for the right documentation to answer even simple questions.
• It’s not clear what needs to be paid and what needs to be billed.
• Some occupations do not earn as much as expected. If you had the appropriate information at the appropriate time, you might have chosen a better, more profitable choice.

Errors And Modifications In Project Scope Continue To Eat Away Your Budgets

Many construction owners struggle with financials because nobody enters the building industry to balance the books. Of course, it would be ideal to have amazing profit margins on every job, but that is not always happen.

Without the right tools, financial management looks a little something like this.

• Because your process for tracking change orders is complicated, you sometimes don’t collect on that extra work.
• Tracking committed costs to actual costs is manual, and you often don’t know where your budget stands until a job’s completed.
• Estimates get created in excel where the information is not always accurate, or costs are missed.

Also Read: 6 Main Benefits of ERP Software in the Construction Industry

What Do You Get Out of Using Construction Automation Software?

A construction or contracting company needs business software that all departments can use. An ERP software integrates all corporate operations and enables a smooth flow of business processes, eliminating the problems outlined above. The list below explains how an ERP solution helps a construction company.

Construction automation: Budgetary control

An ERP solution will help properly allocate budgets and capture all the costs for a particular task or milestone. A construction project has various milestones and tasks, each with its budget set at the beginning of the project. The BOQs can be easily imported from excel for tracking the set budgets.

Construction automation: Project profitability

In ERP software, the costs and revenue of a project can be captured at the project level. This will help management to check the profitability of each project. Management can also check whether the project is finished within the budget or has exceeded the budget.

Construction automation: Multi-level approvals

ERP system approval functionality can control purchasing and expenses by defining role-based limits. When the limit is reached, the transaction will be sent to the next level of authority to be approved. This will help in limiting unauthorized purchases and expenses.

Construction automation: Overhead allocation

To get accurate project profitability, all the costs, including the overheads should be considered. An ERP system can easily assign all the overheads to projects by predefining a cost basis. A project profitability report will help you to get a clear picture of whether your projects are making profits or not. It will also let you know which projects are profitable and which ones aren’t.

Construction automation: Subcontractor and vendor management

A construction company has to deal with various subcontractors and vendors. An ERP system makes it easy to compare each supplier’s quotes, prices, and PDC management.  It helps you save time and money by automating the process of comparing quotes, managing PDCs, and creating purchase orders. It also provides accurate information on all subcontractors and vendors within your company.

Conclusion

Construction in its entirety is a complicated process. As the industry begins to welcome technological advances, more companies are integrating construction automation software into their business models. These tools make processes more efficient, effective, and reliable. This creates better outcomes for everyone involved throughout the entire building process. 

Implementing Construction Automation Software can be your company’s best long-term investment. After creating a comprehensive roadmap for implementation and optimizing business processes, the only thing left is finding the right ERP partner. To learn more about this software, get the Construction Automation Software pricing scheme calculations before implementing the software in your company. You also can get a free demo by clicking here.