The paperless office has long beckoned brick-and-mortar businesses. Although such an ideal has never fully materialized, current technology certainly makes it possible. Of course, most contractors would probably be more interested in a paperless job site than an all-digital office — because that's where they spend most of their time. Indeed, paperless projects are possible, but they harbor both perks and pitfalls.
Efficiency and traceability
Every construction project involves documentation. Yet just because you turn that documentation from physical pages to virtual bits and bytes doesn't necessarily mean you're going to create less of it. No, one of the chief benefits of turning a project paperless is efficiency.
For example, a shipment of lumber arrives at the job site. The delivery ticket reflects the time/date of receipt and identification of the various items, while the daily log notes that a good portion of the lumber is damaged. Further, the accounting system indicates what the materials cost, and the job schedule shows how the faulty lumber will impact job progress.
In a paperless project, all of this documentation would be scanned and submitted to a Web-based project management system. So, rather than have to cobble together the delivery ticket, daily log entry, accounting entries and job schedule items from the various parties involved, you could simply log on to the website and trace the cause and effect of this problem. More important, you could submit a timely change order to the owner.
Buy-in and contract issues
As with any technology solution, buy-in from the project owner to the architect to any subcontractors who'll have access to the system is essential. In other words, everyone must be committed to it and be clear about its procedures. This can be a tall order — especially if any of the parties involved are unfamiliar with the technology.
One way to get buy-in is to build clauses into the contract establishing the nature and use of the Web-based project management system. Points may include who owns the software license and/or project data, which parties have access to the system and how much access they have. Confidentiality issues may come into play as well.
All of these issues are important to execution of a paperless construction project. But they're also potential trip-ups in getting the job at hand underway.
An exciting alternative
If you're tired of losing time and money because key pieces of paper keep getting lost or misleading you into making expensive mistakes, going paperless is a good alternative. Of course, making the transition involves time and expense as well. So careful consideration is warranted before taking the plunge.
