The golden age of communication and collaboration – from 2021 and beyond

Throughout the past couple years, the construction industry has made some major strides – arguably some of its biggest. The ways of the world, in a way,
forced the industry to adapt quickly and adopt (to technology) even quicker

No one could have predicted what was to come, nor how long it would last. Predicting anything during these times can be a challenge, but new technology and ways of working have set many construction companies up for the future, regardless of what it holds. What can we do now as an industry? Try and learn from the trials and take the best practices from those that faired the best.

Every year, Revizto, the industry-leading Integrated Collaboration Platform hold its annual Collaborators of the Year Awards. The global team nominates and votes on architecture, engineering, contractors and other firms AEC industry firms from around the world and holds interviews to understand their best practices.

This year, two of the top five awards, including the top award overall, were won by two firms from the UK: Most Innovative Contractor, Global (Andy Boutle, director – clients and markets – Kier Construction) and Collaborator of the Year Award (Moritz Mombour, senior expert – Drees & Sommer SE).

Learning from the past, building into the future

So we compiled a list of the top construction and construction technology tips and tricks of 2021 from these 20 firms to use moving forward, from 2022 and beyond. From the interview answers, we noticed a trend of four main points: communication and collaboration; the importance of people and the culture of the team; utilising technology to support your team; and personal growths.

Communication and collaboration

The key is not in just communication but in effective and efficient communication across teams. Leveraging tools and communication channels that foster an environment where participants can collaborate, follow-up, drive accountability and measure the impact.

1. Open communication is the key to collaboration and everything that we do.
2. Be open with your collaborative workflows.
3. Plan your work, work your plan.
4. A little bit of follow up with team members goes a long way.
5. Create a collaborative working environment for all stakeholders which creates measurable benefits to the whole team.

Fostering the people

The diversity of the individuals on teams can be the key to success. From industry vets with years of experience and that have lived and worked though the changing environment to the new young-guns with new outlooks, fresh ideas and grew up on technology – empowering them to participate and voice their opinions is the key to growth and success.

1. Work with great people, it makes your job easier.
2. Encourage full participation from the project team.
3. Everyone has unique experiences and ideas, try to listen to them all.
4. Allocate a champion to help support all team members, especially with the adoption of new technology.

Technology is the future and will continue to be

Offsite and onsite teams are continuously getting more integrated and working simultaneously – all thanks to technology. This type of collaboration will continue to accelerate – from the individual roles to across the teams. While technology has empowered many advances, it is still driven by the people, so using defined workflows with technology can help minimise human error and empower the teams to best maximise the tools.

Consumer tech will continue to set expectations in the workplace and this is going to be even more pronounced in the construction industry as the gap in personal tech vs workplace tech is becoming more obvious.

1. Never trust auto save.
2. Following the correct standards and delivering projects to the correct level of detail to prevent wasting time/money.
3. Setup your project’s standards on the front end to save time on a daily basis.
4. Great appearance templates are key to clearly communicating design intent.
5. Attempt to use technology like Revizto for as much as you can during design/construction phase.
6. If your plan isn’t working or conditions change, take two and rework the plan.
7. Design teams should release all sheet files together with models to realise Revizto’s full potential.
8. Client engagement can be significantly increased by taking tools like Revizto into the field on a mobile device.
9. Being able to use Revizto to show clients how building look is just incredible.

Personal growth

Growth comes in many forms. During the past couple of years, everyone has had more time than ever for personal growth and development. It is important to take care of your own mental health so you can bring your best self to all aspects of your life. Here are a few points that some of the industry leaders recommend.

1. Find time to let the brain wander, amazing things happen as a result.
2. Get outside in nature as often as possible.
3. Pursue something new to learn or achieve each year, can be work related or not.
4. Keep it simple.
5. Do things that help change your perspective and always prepare for the unexpected.

But remember, some things most likely will not change

Just as important as predicting what is going to change, we also think it’s important to leverage our industry knowledge to make a few predictions about what won’t change in 2022:

• Project teams and schedules will continue to become more complex, as will the projects.
• The skilled labour shortage will continue.
• Code and regulations around design, sustainability, BIM and communication will continue to get stricter.

We hope this list can help your teams feel even more prepared for what is to come, whatever that might be. Be sure to check out the full list of winners and interviews at Revizto.com. Here is to a great 2022 and beyond.

Original article.