Communication is the milestone to ensure the productivity of the company and collaboration within the team. In a construction company where projects are always on a large scale and complex, effective communication is crucial as it helps finish the project on time, reduces conflicts between teammates, enhances efficiency and provides faster results. It is important as neglecting communication transition can impact the flow of work, the safety of the workers, and the accuracy of the information since the pillar of a well-established project is to first understand the agreement between the company and its customers, to answer their needs but most of all it can waste time.
In addition, great communication relationships enhance the motivation and collaboration in the team and increase the productivity of the employee, and so are the profits. Also, having good relationships with colleagues helps set up a comfortable work environment, and the greater the greater the bond between the employees becomes, the easier it will be to share clear and short information for better and faster results.
Communication supports the improvement of the company as it builds more efficient strategies to help achieve the work to answer the needs of the customers but also to adapt the employee faster to the task and be more eager to finish theirs.
Furthermore, for a construction company, meeting the deadline is a crucial factor in scaling the competence of the company as well as attracting more customer and ensuring their loyalty towards the company. Consequently, to tackle this problem the company has to manage communication and focus each responsibility in different fields to avoid confusion between chat and work-oriented discussion between colleagues, the company has to put in place some protocols.
Consequently, good communication gives many advantages to the company which are:
Faster communication transition with a centralized and streamlined platform to communicate:
Communicating on one platform will elaborate the communication, be time-saving, and help to share information faster. In construction projects, many stakeholders such as the customer, the engineers, the architect, all the contractors as well as the office staff of the company are involved in participating so having one platform that understands the system and embeds all the information in real-time ensures that every stakeholder is updated on the latest information so they can make faster decision-making, be it to build strategies or manage risk.
Furthermore, shared information being updated in real-time provides an updated situation and helps to have better management of the tasks and better time management. Implementing software and digital tools that can not only manage the project, set deadlines, give access to a large quantity of information, and delegate the job to the most suitable person that matches the task; in addition, with this implementation of centralized devices, they can track the progress of the project and foresee risks to prevent them or minimize them.
Reduced conflicts and understanding of the execution process and the plan to proceed with the project
In a Construction Company, the result mostly depends on the plan established beforehand so frequent interaction with the stakeholders is crucial to avoid delays and ensure that the project is within the budget of the company and aligns with the agreement with the customer, thus, the project requires a clear cycle to follow, and needs tests however the goal of the company is always to realize the best output with least amount possible. So to reduce the investment involved in the process, the company can put in place digital tools such as BIM (Building information modeling), which can help the company plan well the extension of the work, discuss the process before its initialization, can also help in calculating the budget for the workforce and the materials needed and forecast the risks to ensure safety and a robust final product that can satisfy the customer. Additionally, having a clear overview of the project helps in understanding the project and the assignment to prevent errors in its execution, and have access to the shared information to reduce research time.
Enhanced collaboration
The execution of a construction project involves many stakeholders from different entities as such each of them has different responsibilities and values to uphold, however using one platform will allow them to interact as their tasks are intertwined, and this opportunity will strengthen the bond between each of them and increase the collaboration in the team, as all of them will be involved in the decision-making. A stronger bond will unify their ideas to achieve a common goal, which will ensure control over the overall project and ensure optimal efficiency in the process.
Besides, this platform will help to track the achievement, assess the task, understand the plan, operate effectively, assign the task, incorporate feedback, and discuss the strategies of the on-site and office staff. This will not only increase the confidence of the stakeholders but on top of that ensure the safety of the employees and their well-being from the beginning to the finalization of the project. Little do people know how important it is to measure our competencies and know if we have overcome them or not because it will grow motivation in the team and productivity. Tracking the evolution of the job will further help to know the commitment of the stakeholders in their job but also manage the time and budget necessary for the achievement of the project and in some cases, prevent risk and hazardous situations that might involve the safety of the employee especially those on-site.
To manage the budget and the time
Achieving a project of such a large scale needs the liability of each stakeholder to engage in finishing their task on time, then, this plan needs an accurate elaboration to be understandable and know what strategies will be more efficient to help to build the project in the shorter time frame, but can also satisfy the customer. So, to answer all of those needs, the company has to set up an effective communication tool to ensure great collaboration for work because having the ability to share the right information with the right person is a strong base that will make a difference with the competitor and improve the overall endeavor.
Knowing how to manage the effort and where to focus can reduce costs for the project and help to manage the time effectively as the company will only focus on the most important steps to achieve the project, which means that the company will optimize their effort and their productivity through the analysis of many strategies and the proposed ideas stated when sharing the communication and communicating the goals of each stakeholder.
To manage documents and data and compile them in a centralized platform to facilitate research and ensure its security
For a construction company, in charge of many projects, all different from one another, thus to compile and organize the documents and digitize the data like the blueprints, documents, plans, pictures, and data, in one platform and having one source of information that gathers all the data in the company offers clear and organized details about the research and will help to support the employees in their work when establishing clear statement backed up with analytical data from a past project or even to study the works that are still in progress and increase the collaboration and the communication between the employees in a team. So, this platform will enhance once more the productivity of the company. Also, it will guarantee the security of the data of the company and ensure that they can be better maintained when digitized.
To result in open communication
Constantly sharing ideas helps to be more open-minded in the decision-making process and it motivates every party to share their ideas and voice their concerns to decide on a more effective and innovative solution, an open communication is proof of the value of each stakeholder and a feeling of being even more included in the project. To sum it up, open communication can impact collaboration in the company, ensure the inclusivity of each stakeholder, strengthen the relationship, increase productivity, and even ensure long-term success.
To support the idea that implementing the most adequate communication tool within the company, can help it to find out its potential and maximize its efficiency.
According to McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) fully implementing social technologies, companies have an opportunity to raise the productivity of interaction workers, and estimates that this raise by 20 to 25% when companies use social media internally, messages become content; a searchable record of knowledge can reduce, by as much as 35 percent so the time employees spend searching for company information. Additional value can be realized through faster, more efficient, and more effective collaboration, both within and between enterprises.
Frederick Gloud states in his book: “Managing the Construction Process” that real-time communication and updates are crucial for managing dynamic construction environments and ensuring timely responses to changes.
Grammarly speculates that Knowledge workers report that effective communication improves both job satisfaction (56%) and relationships with colleagues (54%). As noted earlier, the majority of both knowledge workers and business leaders also agree that their ability to get work done is strongly contingent on how well collaborators can express their needs.
Nonetheless, to have a smooth implementation, the company has to set clear guidelines and a set of rules to adapt the employees to this new practice since being exposed to a means of the process in the company when you are used to the previous way. So, to stay up to date the employees must be exposed to training to practice and understand the new technologies as it will help them on how to use them and to understand their usefulness as it will them to manage more effectively their job and streamline them, also, it improves the skills of the employee and their adaptability to foreign practices and follow up the novelty to help the company to secure a clear and better position on the market and to differentiate from the market competitors.
The platform put should understand, an ERP assigns tasks, tracks the development of the project, and manages the employee and their overall performance, as well as serves to communicate with the customers; a collaboration system to enhance communication within the team and increase open communication and first communication will help the employees to voice their concerns and share their ideas to develop the work in the company, and in consequence, upgrade the productivity and the profits in the company; finally a CRM to measure the satisfaction of the customers and to foresee their needs, to answer them,
Moreover, apart from implementing, new tools and methods to streamline communication in the team, the company can conduct a communication audit, to find the source of the miscommunication and solve it even if the company implements new methods to minimize miscommunication the problem may lay somewhere else other than the technology uses, hence have a clearer view of the problem and address the specific issue to set an effective communication, from the tools used, the environment in the company, the methods and processes used previously.
On the contrary, it was stated that miscommunication can not only affect the mental state of the employee and the financial state of the company but also enhance project failure.
The mental state of the employee going through an unclear direction and invisible perspective can take a toll on the employee’s productivity as they can not visualize the final result given by their leader’s order and the stress given by unclear communication in the team and being unable to offer results drives the employee to lose self-confidence in their abilities as they are unable to control and organize their job, this feeling of being unfit tends to cause quiet quitting. So in addition to the tools and the environment having a great leader in the company can ensure its well-being since they lead their team to always improve themselves to contribute positively to the production of the company.
Also, in the case where the employees lack understanding about how to use the tools and how to master them to improve their skills and their efficiency despite using friendly-user tools, as opposed to helping the company to grow, will sink them because, not knowing how to control communication transition can cause unforeseen situations that might bring loss, as little do people know that misunderstanding the obvious result wanted will waste time, money, and effort to create a failed project, losing customers’ trust and even the fame of the company. This is why it is important to include formation and invest in it to ensure that the investment in the tools will support the efficiency of the employee.
So for each team to create short but clear messages to create a better understanding of the job or the assignment and fast reply from the other party, the company has to, on one hand, implement adequate platforms, customized to the company’s goals and policies and on the other hand strengthen collaboration with team building aside from the assigned job to boost the relationship and collaboration within the team.
To conclude, we now know that using good communication tools that are adequate to the complex requirements of a Construction Company can impact the flow of work, reduce work time, and enhance collaboration and self-confidence in our abilities.
So to find the one adapted to your company, contact Raznameh Group, to make your idea come true.
Princia Rahanitrarimino
Sales and Marketing
Raznameh Group