The construction industry is one of the hardest areas for effective project management. Normally, it deals with sophisticated tasks and numerous stakeholders involved, which makes timely and accurate delivery of project aims very hard to achieve.
In the given circumstances, project managers are in constant search of effective tools that will provide the needed level of optimization and accuracy and help them achieve both tactical and strategic construction goals.
Among various technologies, construction industry practitioners can choose the system designed for their particular needs. Project managers have such a system too.
Here, we’ll elaborate on the key features and challenges for developing construction project management software, one of the most effective technologies that help project managers work efficiently.
Project Management in Construction: Main Challenges
The main problems for project managers working in the construction industry are related to time and money.
According to McKinsey, almost every construction project exceeds its initial budget, and more than two-thirds of them come later as expected. In the given circumstances, each tiny obstacle on the way leads to the great failure of the whole project.
The specific list of challenges includes these issues:
- Disregard of short-term risks. In practice, most delays come as a result of inadequate risk management. Usually, they are caused by over-optimistic subcontractor expectations and unexpected twists in stakeholders’ tastes.
- Lack of clear targeting. Most construction projects suffer from unstable structuring, meaning poor goal setting and/or weak performance management. As a result, most projects lose on the way because handle with numerous unimportant tactical aims that lack a strategic understanding.
- Miscommunication. The more people are involved, the easier it is to lose track of the project. Also, the lack of a unified communication platform causes the situation when the pieces of critical information are dispersed among various chats, and some people remain uninformed and make poor decisions that affect the project delivery.
- Poor forecasting. Project managers tend to set too high expectations, as well as clients and key stakeholders. As a result, people involved in the project set unachievable goals that are bound to fail. Moreover, it’s not always possible to consider extra factors and harmonize the opposing view within the project, which is also bad for the project's effectiveness.
- Cash flow delays. When the project needs new money inputs, it is not that easy to find investment. But even if you have an extra budget, it’s likely you won’t get it on time due to complicated accounting and outdated invoicing.
- Hazard management. Construction is the sphere connected with numerous safety threats, and not every project provides accurate site-specific safety management plans to address this problem.
What Is Construction Project Management Software?
As a type of construction management software, a construction project management system offers a set of tools to facilitate routine activities for project managers working in the industry.
In particular, it enables next-level collaboration within the construction project, providing a unified platform for communication between clients, architects, subcontractors, and internal team members.
The highest aim of this software type is to facilitate all the construction management processes. In practice, it means taking care of all the documentation, communication, and available resources for the project.
The technology enables getting the expected results on schedule and on budget, connecting your teams and project information in one place, and all that lets your make better project management decisions.
How This Type of Software Can Address The Main Challenge in Construction Project Management?
The residential construction project management software copes with numerous tasks connected with projects and personnel, assisting in accounting, calculating job costs, service management, and scheduling. Mainly, it solves most of the problems related to time and money in project management:
- Carefully tracks all the potential project risks, both in short-term and long-term perspectives
- Provides a unified platform for communication and collaboration between all the stakeholders
- Assigns job and sets clear targets everyone can see and control
- Takes care of accounting and invoicing, shortening the delivery time to the maximum
- Lets you create detailed safety plans and control the working conditions and performance of each employee.
Benefits of Construction Project Management Software
- Timely project delivery. By providing visibility and flexibility, landscape construction project management software enables completing the most sophisticated tasks by sticking to the deadline.
- A systematic approach to project management. The program designed for the construction project management needs helps make this job easier. It collects all the valuable information in one place and provides the knowledge base for creating professional RFIs, transmittals, business letters, and change requests. What’s more, the stakeholders will see these activities right away in the software.
- Greater collaboration between stakeholders. A useful feature of project management software for contractors is in viewing their business more clearly and collaborate better.
- Easy information sharing. Project management consists of task setting and talk handling. And so, getting the tool for document control with open access significantly facilitates working on the project.
- Better costs control. When your employees have access to the project management software, they can leave notes on the budget status so no money request is lost on the way. Moreover, it makes it easy to spot and prevent project cost overrun and huge unnecessary spending from happening.
Main Features of Commercial Construction Project Management Software
- Planning modules. Construction project management scheduling software should support assigning jobs and management of the resource, material, and equipment schedules. The feature includes creating timelines for the internal team and subcontractors, increasing the efficiency of collaboration, and keeping all the stakeholders up-to-date on the project status.
- Inventory management. The project management software helps to deal with numerous resources for the projects. In this context, it takes over the accounting, maintenance, and distribution of equipment, letting project managers concentrate on communication and more complex business tasks.
- Financial management tools. Construction project management software needs advanced tools for budget control. In particular, it should let your team and subcontractors submit several bids. Beyond this functionality, the system needs to track associated financial information, including payroll, invoices, and overall budget status.
- Document management. The software should replace extensive paperwork for the project, meaning financial documents, RFPs, submittals, contracts, etc. With a cloud-based document management system, project managers should save time, money, and nerves.
- Communication platform. The system should provide a unified and easy-to-use platform that eliminates the need for using emails, chats, and phone calls. In this regard, the software should have an appealing and efficient UI/UX and provide all the information on the project status needed for discussion. Going for a custom solution will increase the accuracy of this module to the maximum, as your development team will adjust the program functionality to your particular team of stakeholders.
- Feedback collection. For civil construction project management software, the ability to quickly access designs and evaluate them is essential. In this context, an in-built customer relationship management system is essential to ensure that you and your team are doing everything right and the project is truly successful.
- Mobile compatibility. Your team should be able to access the project management software from any device. For this, we recommend building a cloud-based program that will work in any location. Also, investing in a mobile app or a mobile responsive design is the working decision to achieve the needed reach and engagement with the software.
How Does Software Development Outsourcing Can Help Your Company Create Construction Project Management Software?
Outsourcing is generally the best option for software development, possessing outstanding cost-effectiveness and the ability to get a fresh perspective on your enterprise operations. In general, this decision lets businesses concentrate on business-critical tasks and creative problems. That’s why we highly recommend outsourcing software development to a reliable tech partner.
For the construction industry specifically, the decision to go for outsourcing lets you optimize your budget, get access to time-proven expertise and establish collaboration with a reliable and professional service provider.
In the case of construction ERP software development, you can get a construction project management module along with CRM and reporting systems, which increases the business impact of this move as a whole.
For effective cooperation with our outsourcing tech vendor, we highly recommend elaborating metrics and KPIs for the project progress control. In the case of developing construction project management software, they can include lead time, active days, production, MTBF, and security (check the full list of top 13 metrics here).
This way, you can ensure going for more effective project management and planning, accurate priority setting, and timely bottlenecks spotting.
Ask Intellectsoft for Help
If you decide to introduce project management software for construction, don’t hesitate to ask for our help! We, at Intellectsoft, offer a wide range of construction software development services, including:
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
- Project Management
- Inspection Management
- Customer Portal and Partner Portal
- Construction Integrations
- Analytics and Reporting
- Project Onboarding and Training
Our construction project management software is an advanced system that facilitates and streamlines operations processing both onsite and offsite.
With this program, you can oversee the planning, design, and construction of the whole project lifecycles and reach accurate results. The areas we address include risk and asset management, activity planning, task assignment, team collaboration, and many more.
Contact our experts to get the software development project started! We’re ready to dedicate all our knowledge and skills to increase the effectiveness of your construction project management activities.
