44. The Benefits of Embracing a Collaborative Approach in Construction with David Swider

Have you ever wondered how successful managers and contractors keep their teams and projects on time and under budget? It boils down to collaboration, specifically on job sites and in the technology solutions they use. David Swider is an industry advisor at InEight Inc., an Arizona-based company that helps construction companies visualize, estimate and manage all aspects of their projects from start to finish. 

In this episode, David explains what “the collaborative approach” is and how it is applied in the construction world. He shares how it’s changing the way vendors, contractors, subcontractors and customers approach building projects. David also breaks down exactly how transparency, data, workflow and KPI tracking work together to drive collaboration.

 

Key Takeaways:

 

Team collaboration is the key to success – in technology and on job sites. When everyone’s success is interconnected, it fosters an environment of collaboration. This is why collaborative platforms shine – teams enjoy transparency while everything they need, such as BIM, KPI reports, and labor statistics, are all in one place. A collaborative job site encourages shared ideas and best practices that traditionally would never make it outside of a siloed team. By opening data and communication across functions and teams, employees become more engaged and leaders see better results. New modular technology boosts collaboration by integrating technologies. Modular technology doesn’t remove the need for skilled and experienced leaders on the job site. Instead, it allows all the data on a job site to flow between different platforms – which supports, you guessed it, collaboration. Modular technology allows key personnel to spend their time utilizing their experience instead of looking through files to dig up data.  Real-time earned value is the best KPI to assess a team’s effort. Monitoring real-time earned value is the best way to stay in scope and on budget. The real-time comparison of actual spending and progress against what was projected creates insights your team can use instantaneously. Real-time earned value is critical to understand where each part of the project stands to evaluate the efficiency of how your teams are performing compared to the budget.