TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGES FOR CONSTRUCTION: Embrace it like you would embrace a Cactus!

"You need to stop the work until you are in compliance!", the resident engineer barked over the phone. How we got to this point is another story, but when I refused to stop with a verbal directive, he quickly said "then I'll fax you a written stop work order!" I don't usually lose my temper, but this guy was under my skin so I slammed down the receiver, walked out of my office and unplugged the fax machine. It was early in the shift, the dispute was mostly administrative, the resident engineer was just trying to flex his authority and I wasn't in the mood to play. The point of this situation is demonstration of how technology changes the way we do business, especially in construction. I was able to let my crew finish the shift simply by removing a piece of modern technology, well modern for the 1990s anyhow.

I started with a manual typewriter, you'd type until it dinged and then you pushed the lever to return the carriage and advance one line. If you wanted a blank line between paragraphs , you had to push the lever twice. Then came the IBM Selectric typewriters with the cool little ball that you could change to utilize a different font. A lot of people used the italics font, I think just to brag about their typewriter and their superior office technology. Then came the personal computer, word perfect, and a dot matrix printer. You still had to store your files on a floppy disk and either hand deliver or mail the letter to the recipient. We'd often drop the "F.U." letters to the highway department on their door step after hours on Friday, so they might start their next week reeling from a dot matrix sucker punch in a manilla envelope.

As a society, we set limits to minimize risk. Roadways have speed limits because higher speeds reduce the time available to react to an emergency or correct for a problem. If you drift off the shoulder at 40 mph, you might be able to recover but at 100 mph, it becomes more precarious. The leap from Manual Typewriters and US Mail to PC's and Fax Machines raised our business speed significantly. Then came Email, Cell Phones, and Text Messaging. Suddenly we've accelerated our business past the 100 mph pace and our time to react or correct has decreased exponentially. Even worse, it's all stored for posterity and lawyers well into the future. Heck A.I. may put us into supersonic speeds soon.

In the field: The 1990's saw a transition from optical survey to lasers, then to GPS, and now we have a combination of Laser's and GPS. We have drones that do topographic surveys in minutes when the old optical or hand held GPS would have taken days or even weeks to complete. Owner's are able to measure how much work you've done well before you ever submit your invoice. Many times they are misinterpreting the information, but the debate and untangling delays your payment. Vendors and Subs, don't care why it's late, they just want their money for the same reasons you need yours.

There is plenty of conversation about information overload in the 21st century, and I'm not writing about that topic. What I am addressing is how contractors have been pinned down by the rapid acceleration of technology in the business. Mistakes happen so quickly that the process to catch those mistakes goes by at supersonic speeds and the repercussions bounce back just as fast. F.U. letters can be sent in a blink of time that you often wish you had back. The old "sleep on it before you send it" adage is buried in a sarcophagus next to the horse and buggy. The neurochemicals in our system that rile us up almost always affect our judgement and the time it takes to restore balance hasn't kept up with the technology that prods us constantly and keeps our amygdala on alert and the cortisol circulating around the clock.

The old methods of creating systems for the construction business are as obsolete as rotary phones, dumpy levels, and manual typewriters. New systems need to have modern guardrails that can contain mistakes at today's rate of transmission. I used to have a one hour commute to work that gave me two hours a day in solitude to contemplate the days events and modify my agenda for the next day. Cell phones, emails, and text messages have stolen that critical time needed for calm rationalization.

I started with a manual typewriter and optical survey. I've watched the US Mail be upended by Federal Express, who was upended by the Facsimile Machine, who was ultimately retired by Email and Cloud Storage. I've lived through the transitions, built defensive systems, and I realize that I still don't have all of the answers because technology continues to accelerate and metastasize. But I have helped to develop successful process architectures designed to help mitigate the danger and I would love to help you build a living system to help you keep pace with the industry.

Technology challenges for construction like plan revisions; inspection reports; survey certifications; test results; owner decisions; pay estimates; certificates; submittals; and more; are constantly evolving and it's rarely to the benefit of the contractor. Margins are thinner than ever and wasting talent on inefficient systems is burning cash that you really can't afford to burn. Automobile and equipment manufacturers put real time monitoring in their machines to protect themselves more so than to help you manage your fleet.

I can develop a risk assessment at appropriate levels and help you to adopt a plan that stays within your time and monetary budget while starting you on a road to proactive risk management. Please feel free to contact me if you'd like to explore methods to help reduce your cortisol levels, improve your bottom line, and most importantly, improve your work life balance despite the angry buzzing of technology.

BK