Construction Informer

The automation that mobile devices are bringing to construction makes me wonder some times how we ever managed to get anything done with the old, paper-based systems. From tracking employee time to accessing project documents on the run, these tools, with their associated software applications, keep begging us to get more efficient – and offering the ways to do it too.

Chris Thorman, over at Software Advice asked me to take a look at a proposed application that would streamline the punch list process. Believe me, I sympathize with anyone who has to deal with these interim and final project checkups on what’s been done, and how it’s been done. A number of years ago when I was actively managing construction projects I had created an MS Word form and put it on my Palm Tungsten T3. As I went through the buildings I’d note the discrepancies, typing furiously with the stylus. If youve aver trie typing furioiusly with a styls ou nkow you end up wit sentences like this.

So then it was back to the office, synch, and clean it up. Next, create emails and send out the attachment to all concerned and print up a copy to provide to everyone who would later ask me for a paper copy anyway. But all that would be a thing of the past if someone created a mobile application like Chris is envisioning.

Here’s his very detailed post on a punch list for the 21st century, along with some great graphics so you can visualize just what he’s talking about.

As construction continues to modernize, the technologies that make it all possible are under the gun to find solutions for construction’s very unique environment. Tracking processes and materials that are on the move, being consumed, and being transfigured into other things, while weather, price volatility, human error, and multiple, disparate stake holders each with its own interests to protect, interact in random fashion, is not an entirely easy feat. And one that is often buried in paper.

But now, paper is getting tamed – at least some people are attempting to do so. If you can imagine punching some buttons on a wireless mobile device in order to file any number of paper reports and forms throughout the day, then you have glimpsed the future, except that that future is now.

Don Lewis, sales manager for F2B Mobile Solutions LLC, tells of the demise of the paper tiger out in the field. F2B (I like to think of it as meaning Field to Base), takes all your paper forms and reports, makes them digital, and makes them available on tablet PCs for anyone who works out of the office. In this case F2B also connects seamlessly to Sage Timberline Office, so once the form or report is filled in and sent via wireless, (or wired), link to the office, the information is automatically put into the appropriate places within Timberline. From there the data can be used for any number of purposes, from analysis, to reports, to automatically filling out other forms.

Of course there are other solutions available for those who want to tame the paper in the field but don’t run Timberline Office. One is called Paper2Mobile and it runs on all PocketPC, Windows Mobile 5 and XP devices, and, the company says you can integrate collected data with existing systems.

Perhaps it is time to work our way out of paper. It certainly has had a long run of use and has been made of many substances. For example, During St. Patrick’s lifetime the paper available was nothing like the paper we know of today. It was not widely available in Ireland and if it was it was no doubt of the parchment kind – made of bark, fishnet, hemp, and rags, or other materials. Probably a type we wouldn’t have even wanted to use.