Why Construction Document Management Software is Often Insufficient

One industry expert has calculated that a contractor with 50 field employees can easily spend 18,000 manhours per year looking for documents and information that should be close at hand—that amounts to about $810,000.

On a base level, just finding information on where each piece of equipment is located, what project it is assigned to and when it becomes available can be a chore. And then information on each piece of equipment—manuals, inspection forms, maintenance history, fuel specifications, serial number—good luck with that if you don’t have a well-designed construction operations application.

Does Document Management Solve This?

The sheer number of construction document management software products is staggering. Some are part of an enterprise business suite. Others are standalone document repositories.

A few offerings are designed for large projects with multiple stakeholders and provide a common data environment for things like joint ventures or major infrastructure projects.

However, these are not going to help the heavy civil contractor with their day-to-day work. That's because in a construction operations environment, multiple stand-alone systems and complex software cause more problems than they solve. In an operations setting, documents and information need to be in context, attached to a task, equipment record, preventive maintenance work order, etc. - having to loop back to what you were doing previously is a failure.

Accessing Construction Operations Data

Regardless of where data or documents reside, powerful and modern construction operations software provides access to it in the appropriate functional screen.

An employee scheduled for a job receives a text message with a link to the application. At this link they will find:

·       Their job assignment with location

·       A schedule for outside trucks and third-party subcontractors

·       A dispatch ticket for equipment with pickup time

·       Information on who else is assigned so they can carpool

An equipment manager can quickly pull up:

·       Details on any single piece of equipment or class of equipment

·       Specifications including fuel capacity and serial number

·       Maintenance history including inspection forms, PMs, annual inspections, hours before maintenance is due, and more

Even if equipment data resides outside IVO Systems, the software can still link to that and ensure it is immediately available in context, when someone needs it to support the business.

Why Context is Important

Construction operations software that is not used consistently or at all is not going to drive much improvement in a business. Modern software developed by those who truly understand the challenges faced by heavy civil contractors will keep information access in context and accessible from the functional screens where it will be most useful and timely.

Context of use is one of the most important ideas in the science of human-computer interaction (HCI).

“(HCI) expanded from early graphical user interfaces to include myriad interaction techniques and devices, multi-modal interactions, tool support for model-based user interface specification, and a host of emerging ubiquitous, handheld and context-aware interactions,” HCI originator John M. Carroll wrote.

While academic writing about HCI is pretty dry, the idea behind contextual design is simple enough, and according to the Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, is based on a handful of principles:

·       System design must support and extend users’ work practices—ignoring how things are done will be counterproductive

·       People are experts at what they do, but are unable to articulate their own work practice—observing how things are done will be important or better yet, coming from that same discipline

·       Good design requires partnership and participation with users—software developed in partnership with customer organizations will be optimized more than those that are not

·       Good design is systemic and are consistently used throughout an application—one reason lashing too many very different pieces of software together into a combined solution can present barriers

To find out how IVO Systems solves this and other problems, request a demo. And to learn more about the value leaks in your business we can help you fix, download this quick read.