One of the things that can really unravel a project is a lack of communication between the people working on a particular job. Jobs can have literally hundreds of people working on them from project managers, the project team, architects, right down to all the various subcontractors and their own employees. Ensuring smooth communication between all these people can seem like a massive task, but it doesn’t have to be.
In order to ensure the project runs smoothly, it’s important to ensure the communication procedure is set right from the start. Nothing infuriates project teams more than being given the answer to an RFI days after it came in, working off old plans that have since been updated two or three times and not having the most up to date version of the schedule. Through these simple breakdowns in communication, time and money are wasted and staff confidence can slowly be eroded.
But there are also so many advances in technology these days that can assist project teams in maintaining open and effective channels of communication. For a start, software with a central database, where all employees log into the same system and can see the most up to date project documents is an incredibly valuable asset for a project team. Project team members then have no reason to not have the most up to date information.
But what about subcontractors who may not necessarily have access to the software? Well, there are also ways to ensure the good communication can extend to subcontractors and also right through to site level. Workflows can be set up to automatically send emails to alert relevant subcontractors that an updated plan has been added to the database, or a change has been made to the schedule. This way everyone stays in the loop and can work efficiently with the most up to date information.
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