Poor communication is possible the biggest setback in the construction world. Lets look at a common scenario for a change order. The Owner wants to make a change. So he communicates with the Architect. The Architect issues a proposal request to the General Contractor. The General Contractor asks the Sub Contractors for a cost estimate. Often times the Sub Contractors have extra-specialized Sub Contractors under them (Sub-Sub Contractors) who need to also estimate the cost of the change. Now that the costs have been estimated, the only way to get it back to the Owner is to run the whole process in reverse, Sub-Sub Contractor to Sub Contractor to General Contractor to Architect and finally to the Owner. The Owner likes the cost estimates and approves the change. Now all the involved parties need to know that the change has been accepted so the line of communication starts all over again. Once the work is finished, the billing cycle has to go through the same process. Every day the construction industry is a real life example of the children’s game “telephone.” For those of you who don’t know, Telephone is a game where a group of children sit in a circle. One child whispers a phrase into the next’s ear and the process is repeated around the circle. By the time the phrase gets back to the originator, what was once “green eggs and ham” is now “mean legs on a ram.” The point being, if there is a mis-communication anywhere along the line, the problem gets compounded.
Every mis-communication in the construction world costs money. Some cost a little, others cost millions. There is an easy solution to this problem. It’s the keenBIM central server. By the nature of being web based, it can be accessed by anyone with permission. If you give all involved parties in a project the permission to access the server, communication can happen without the line. The Architect can post a change order and all affected subs can submit prices to the server. The Owner can see them in real time as they come in. Everything can be recorded and cataloged. The keenBIM central server puts an end to the costly game of “Construction Telephone.”
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