Valuable Information Generated Throughout the Project

When starting a new project, contractors, construction managers and clients are all worried about completing a project on time and within budget. Almost no one is thinking about what will happen to all of the information that is generated throughout the life of the project.

The operations and maintenance team should be, but they are used to being handed large volumes of paper manuals that provide little value with today's technologically advanced plants. Often these manuals end up in a basement or storage facility to decay along with bankers boxes full of project documents. Considering the amount of money spent on building the plant and the amount of valuable information that is generated, construction managers, and clients especially, need to look at this gold mine of information differently.

This information provides ways to reduce operating costs, improve how the next project is designed, and provides historical costs for budgeting for the next project. New technology allows project information to be tracked electronically throughout design and construction, meaning that this rich resource is now easily accessible.

Instead of storing and shredding thousands of pounds of paper upon project completion, this information can be transferred to O&M teams, Plant Engineers, and Designers at the click of a mouse, thanks to collaborative construction management software.

With powerful search technologies and the ability to link this data to BIM models and GIS applications, these volumes of electronic information will continue to deliver substantial benefits and cost savings to the client. To reap the benefits of this electronic information, the project team needs to identify how they are going to manage all this project information electronically from the start of the job. By taking advantage of a collaborative construction management application from conception through design to project completion, managers build a repository of data that will pay for itself multiple times over during the life of the project. Project teams need to look at the information life cycle just as they look at a plant's life cycle cost and control it accordingly.

Death of the Transmittal

With today's collaborative construction management software moving information electronically across the project team, the paper transmittal is finally dead. The transmittal was originally implemented to track the sharing and exchange of project information between members of a project team. Originally it was shipped, then faxed and more recently emailed with project documents like drawings, submittals, and RFIs. This laborious and tedious task is no longer necessary for project teams using collaborative construction management software. These software tools log when information is sent, read, and responded to.

This is all the same functionality that a transmittal used to deliver without a user having to spend hours generating this information and tracking it. You also get the advantage of being able to run reports and search this information without having to re-enter it into an Excel spreadsheet. One less piece of paper to log, photocopy, and file on the project leads to cost savings; projects completed sooner, with one less chance for human error. And for those mindful of environmental impacts, this is a great way to go green while saving serious green on your next project.