It’s no secret that good data, when harnessed, enables better decisions. However, the long-standing challenge for construction has been in collecting and accessing high-quality data.

As Touchplan’s President Michael Carr wrote in a previous post, it’s worth taking a hard look at how data affects your business: “What decisions are you required to make today with limited or no data? How would your business change if you had new insights into these areas from reliable data? How disadvantaged would you be if your competitors had these insights and you didn’t? This is high-stakes stuff, and, as with any disruption, there will be winners and losers. The good news is that there is still time for those of us in construction to respond to our advantage.”

And the industry has responded, increasingly adopting digital tools in recent years that have made data collection significantly easier. Whether through video site capture, monitoring through drones and sensors, or digital collaboration and project tracking tools, getting accurate insight into the state of your project is exponentially easier than ever before.

Unlock Productivity Metrics

Collaboration tools such as Touchplan facilitate real-time data collection and sharing that increases visibility and enables more precise planning and communication. Data on a project’s progress and productivity metrics is especially useful information for contractors. Strategically tracking productivity data has huge implications for everything from project bidding to materials to staffing levels. Granular visibility into production rates allows you to better calculate your bids, and can help in determining how many people will be needed to get a job done in a given timeframe.

Trade partners also benefit from access to this data to help count their materials. Those quantities, along with information on the headcount and time required for each task can be used to better gauge production rates and the cost for materials and labor. Better insight into all of these factors can help trade partners work more effectively with general contractors in identifying any potential issues or delays and working to address them proactively, minimizing disruption to the project schedule.

Empower Users

At Touchplan, we focus on making it easy for front-end users to input accurate data because it benefits everyone involved—including the users themselves, which incentivizes accurate reporting. This will become even easier within the next few months as we unveil our new mobile app and dashboards. Stay tuned for more details on these new features soon!