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Construction Team Meetings: Where Baby Boomers and Gen Y Collide August 24, 2012

Posted by carolhagen in Construction Industry - Software, Document Imaging, records retention, Sharepoint, web conferencing.
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Team meetings in construction offices are transforming as we speak.  After reading this CNN article, ‘Generation Y’ set to transform office life and a tweet from Jennifer Hicks it made me think about what is happening in the AEC industry. We’re all so mobile that unless we can all work together on our own schedules and collaborate effectively we’re doomed to failure.

Conversations are Team Meetings

What the construction industry is counting on is technology to make our communications clearer.  Industry leaders use video conferencing to have conversations – important to capture body language cues and readily available, apps abound on many smartphones and social networks today.  Seems like the project managers I know send an email following a conversation to recap and document what they just said.

Project Documents are Changing

Our documents are  easily accessible from Sharepoint, Construction Imaging, project management team portals, or Box.net as all generations are wanting access from anywhere, anytime.  (If you haven’t made the transition to electronic documents you better be thinking about it before you get busy again.) Mark-ups and edits occur on documents frequently and the construction plans seem to pose the biggest challenges.  Versioning control is a decision everyday.  Your records management integrity depends on it.

Collaborative Construction Communications Technology

What do construction team meetings look like today? They’re collaborative, mobile and transparent.  At least the successful ones are.  If you expect to collaborate solely with email you will need more hours in your day.  It’s time to transform your methods and it needs to work for internal and external teams.  One such solution is gaining respect in the industry.  It’s called Bluebeam Studio and I’m luckily part of their partner program.  Watch this short video and see what you think.  Your socks are about to be blown off!

The value is in working simultaneously or on your own time.  If you can’t make it to the Studio session it can be left open for you to chime in later.  If you’re running a pre-construction meeting you can meet virtually and work together. The flexibility is all there.  Have you used Studio?  Would you like to experience it for yourself?  Leave a comment and I’ll invite you and your team to a Studio project and collaborate together today.

This crosses all workforce generations and makes a visual record that’s easy to learn, review, share and save to your project document repository.

The Future of Construction and Technology: A Manifesto July 12, 2012

Posted by carolhagen in Construction Industry - Software.
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5 Demands of Construction Technology Today

Insightful for Construction Office and Field Technology

Yesterday I received a gift via email that I thought I should share, this ebook. It’s a quick read from the president of AIIM International, who understands why doing business like you used to will be to the detriment of your business.  This title reminded me of “the Cloud and Mobile Computing Technology” panel discussion at the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA) Annual Conference last month.  With every manifesto comes demands.  In this case there are five:

  1. Commit to the Cloud
  2. Mobilize everything
  3. Make the business social
  4. Digitize anything that moves
  5. Prepare for extreme information management

This ebook validated my company services and and our solutions alignment with the needs of the construction industry. Are you working in a paperless plan room?  Can you collaborate and communicate electronically with your documents from your smartphone or tablet?   Has the volume of data you collect grown exponentially and are you putting this data to good use with business intelligence?  Whether you are the CEO, CFO, CIO or VP of Operations at a contracting firm I suggest you take a moment to grab a copy for yourself at http://www.aiim.org/About/News/OccupyIT-eBook

Do you agree with these demands?  Why or why not?  Leave us your feedback in the comments.

Let us help you avoid the “Why the hell have I been spending so much on technology, and yet have so much frustration to show for it?” syndrome.

If you liked this post you may find these other articles of interest:

The Construction Office Imperative: Digitize, Go Paperless and Mobile

Construction Accounting Software Selection is Strategic

Construction PDFs: How General Contractors Streamline Processes