Improve Team Collaboration on Construction Projects
All construction projects must be delivered within the agreed quality requirements. There are many factors affecting this process, but at least two of the factors can be improved and controlled with a simple app: team collaboration and coordination.
How is Quality Assurance work done today? You, the Quality Manager, go around the building, checking for issues that are not ready for delivery. Back in the office, you put all the issues in a report. If you took pictures on site, you transfer them on your laptop and copy-paste each of them to the report. If you didn’t take pictures your team will ask a lot of questions before they know which and where the problems are in the building. You’ll then print out the papers for everybody. Hopefully, they won’t lose them among other papers and plans they have. You assign persons for each task. Then each member of your team will call you or send you an e-mail when they have fixed the issue. You will have to go through all e-mails to gather information and check the list. If you need to put your clients on the same page, you will have to scan the report, send it by e-mail, wait for feedback and repeat the whole process if needed.
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That’s quite a lot of time wasted only to coordinate the work, isn’t it? Why not make this process just a little simpler? Mobile solutions can be used to ease collaboration and coordination in the team, so that they have the suitable environment to do their job in a more efficient way.
Team collaboration is defined by “a team of people working together for a common goal”, whereas team coordination is defined by “the process of organizing people so that they work together properly and well”. In other words, collaboration deals with WHAT they work for and coordination is HOW they work for it properly.
So how can a mobile app assist both team collaboration and coordination for quality project delivery?
Organize work in projects and reports – collaboration
When you use IssMan, the common goal in the team, is to deliver the project within the agreed quality requirements. Two things need to be done before the goal is reached: the team should know exactly what is to be repaired, and fix the issues until they reach the agreed quality.
The way IssMan is structured supports team collaboration. The application is structured in projects (e.g Building A) and reports (sub-folders of each project, describing a certain area of work (e.g “Stairs”, “Installations”, “Plumbing system”, etc). By showing exactly the areas that have to be checked and fixed before the delivery, your team knows exactly where they need to focus their attention.
The project leader could be the one adding the project and all reports (areas) in the application, with all that needs to be checked before Building A is ready for delivery. When the project leader uses the “Sharing” option in the application, he/she gives the team members access to the same information, as well as right to edit and add whatever is needed. In this way, everybody is on the same page and have an overview of what they need to work on.
Assign tasks and receive instant feedback – coordination
When everyone is clear about what they work for, IssMan helps the team coordinate in the most efficient way on how to work for it. You can use the option “to assign tasks”, which is extremely useful for distributing workload. Each member receives instant notifications in the app, as well as e-mails with the tasks they have been assigned for, the deadline and the urgency of the task. After they check and fix the issue, they can mark “issue fixed” in the app. In this way, everyone in the team will know that the issue is fixed and ready for delivery.
Send reports right away
Aside from the in-app feedback, with IssMan you can send reports to anyone you consider relevant, whether they use the app or not. You can send reports to your client for example, directly in the app. In this way, the client can give you feedback early in the process, so that you make sure that the quality you deliver is the same with the quality required.
With a mobile solution with integrated team collaboration and coordination, the project delivery process is much simplified.
