How Much Indecision is Costing You (And How to Fix It)

Construction project teams have an expanding set of stakeholders, and teams are constantly chasing the answers to critical questions to keep their projects on track. This process is time-consuming and error-prone, which leaves general contractors struggling to coordinate communication between architects, engineers, trade contractors, and suppliers to provide all the information required for their clients to have confidence in making those critical decisions.

Indecision could be costing your projects valuable time and money. 

It doesn’t have to stay this way, and there’s a successful playbook for improvement. Changing your workflows and implementing tools to support those workflows can minimize errors and drastically reduce time spent managing communications. 

When Decisions Make a Difference on Projects

Not all decisions are equal, but creating a repeatable process can be the most critical thing any general contractor can do to improve the outcome of a project.

Preconstruction is the most impactful time to make decisions to guide the project and keep the project on track. The core of decision-making targets the values established as a core tenant of the project. Construction project decisions are a complicated structure of cost, schedule, and impact on the design, to name a few. 

General contractors gather input from designers on changes, collect pricing from trade contractors and suppliers, and organize all the information and clearly articulate the impacts of the change. The goal of the process is to allow their clients to feel confident in the decision-making process and keep the project moving forward.  

Why Decisions Take So Long

Preconstruction teams are evolving to have design managers, estimators, project engineers, and preconstruction leaders. These individuals and groups are gathering project-related information and preparing it for their clients to make the decision.  Most contractors use a combination of estimating software, excel spreadsheets, shared document storage, email, and PowerPoint to communicate the information. 

This combination of tools used results in a complicated web of disparate information sources that leave gaps of understanding and provide clients an opportunity to push decisions further. Every decision that gets delayed through preconstruction is delaying the project’s construction time. 

Project teams need to understand that these early delays may seem insignificant. Still, as weeks pass and decisions back up, the team either delays the schedule or creates a substantial risk that field teams will need to solve during construction.

Reduce Complexity and Maintain Trust with Better Technology

The structure is in place; your teams are diligently putting the work into options for your clients, yet indecision reigns. The problem lies in the current tools used to communicate the complicated requirements around construction project decisions. Your team needs a new tool to present the data in its entirety and create confidence in your client’s ability to make a fully informed decision. 

The Join platform was built to support your team’s efforts and purposefully designed to solve the problems of communicating complicated construction decisions in a collaborative environment.

Your clients have confidence in their access to information and transparency while trusting that they have all they need to make an informed decision. This confidence translates directly to better client relationships and increases project success by creating trust among all stakeholders. Preconstruction teams that use Join set the entire project team up for success.