There are a myriad of challenges construction projects often face due to unexpected delays, weather constraints, worker shortages, and communication issues. Construction project managers and front office executives are often looking for fresh ideas to minimize these obstacles and pave a path toward continuous improvement. Let’s take a look at some unique ways that progressive construction leaders can leverage digitization so projects come in on time and under budget.
What is construction resource management?
Construction resource management in plain English, according to our friends at The Motley Fool “refers to how a company tracks and uses equipment, workers, facilities, materials, funding, or anything else that might be considered a resource by a construction firm”.
Construction resource management is essentially a fancy way of saying, “let’s gitter done with what we got”. So the critical element of gitter done, relies heavily on understanding what you’ve got.
Effective construction resource management requires that you have the tools necessary to track and measure what you’ve got, because only what gets measured can be managed effectively. Contractors on smaller projects may use spreadsheets, pencil and paper, and walk around with a clipboard to manually track labor, materials, deliveries, and equipment. More sophisticated tools include robust construction project management software or ERP’s.
Whatever stage you find yourself in today, we know that there is always room for improvement. The better you can track your resources, share that information across teams, and develop analytics to improve job performance and identify deficiencies, the faster you can find ourselves on the path to continuous improvement.
The top opportunities for construction project managers to digitize their resource management:
Digitizing construction resource management can be as simple as finding ways to easily create centralized digital records and workflows to track what happens in the physical world. Once processes, people, places and things are digitized, they can be measured and innovation can take place.
Here are a few opportunities for construction project managers to consider digitizing on the path to continuous improvement and innovation:
- Labor – Tracking everything labor related such as timesheets, headcount, 3rd party labor-for-hire vendors, safety and incident reporting, daily logs and anything related to manpower for unparalelled visibility into workforce operations.
- Materials – having a record of materials, onsite inventory, and an audit trail of deliveries to a jobsite can be daunting. At the end of the day, who checked it in, verified the packing slip, and decided where it was going to be staged?
- Equipment & Rentals – To eliminate profit leakage, it’s important to stay on top of equipment rentals and tools to ensure that they are not left laying around the job site or eventually stolen. Having automated reminders for equipment can be a huge boon to profits and reduce liabilities.
- Communication – weather and materials delays can cause manpower costs to accumulate unnecessarily. Having broadcast abilities to coordinate en mass with partners, workers, and subs can help curb wasted spending, rework, and improve worker morale with a more efficient jobsite.
How SmartBarrel Helps Optimize Construction Resource Management
SmartBarrel simplifies the onsite human capital management processes involved with running a variety of different jobsites. By easily tracking hourly labor, subcontractors, temp labor, time cards, and a myriad of other jobsite data points, we connect what’s happening in the real world to important back office functions like payroll / certified payroll, safety incident reporting, and PPE enforcement; all while providing total site communication capabilities.
If you are a Specialty Contractor and would like to know more about how you can automate payroll, eliminate buddy punching, and hedge against liability, learn more about how we help specialty contractors and self perform GC.
If you are a General Contractor and would like to know more about optimizing your workforce management and saving dozens of man hours per month, learn more about how we help general contractors.
