Sustainable success is a team effort, and the success of your firm hinges on how all your project information is shared amongst team members. For your firm to truly thrive, your team needs the 30,000-foot view from inception to completion of each project.

The underlying problem is that a typical project can involve terabytes of data that your team is responsible for managing and maintaining. Unfortunately, team members often have a limited view of the correspondence and details surrounding a project because firms often rely on manual process and disconnected systems to manage communications and files.

Without the right technology tools, critical project documents can be difficult if not impossible to find, jeopardizing client deadlines and ultimately your bottom line. As a result, making timely and accurate decisions isn’t always possible. Here are three issues that keep an A/E/C firm from thriving:

1. The firm is drowning in a deluge of files and emails related to each project. 
   Most projects, if not all, consist of a team of 2-10 people with internal and external stakeholders. Unfortunately, team members often have a limited view of the back-and-forth communications and details on a project because emails aren’t incorporated into the entire project record or they are difficult to find. As a result, it can be difficult to find and search all email communications within a given team and make the information discoverable. In fact, nearly 30 percent of all employees’ time (2.5 hours per day) is spenttrying to find lost documents. Given these statistics, email and file management is a real problem and a costly frustration.

2. Your firm has a greater potential for risk because of disparate technology stacks. 
   The A/E/C industry is unique in that the success of a project typically hinges on how well project team members collaborate and share information. Of interesting note, 74 percent of project managers usebetween two to five tools for each project. For example, one person could be using one program for email, another for markups and another for CAD work and 3D modeling, and so on. Unfortunately, it’s common for firms to use a disparate collection of technology resulting in added administrative workload, marginalized audit trails and added risk.

3.  Your firm doesn’t want to be forced to learn a new system to get back to work.
   Typical Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS) software can take four to six months to implement and requires a team to give up applications already in use or to radically change existing workflows and processes. Furthermore, most companies only upload 30 to 40 percent of all project information. As a result, the firm doesn’t have the 30,000-foot view necessary to make accurate decisions because searching and indexing is incomplete.

In short, a connected software environment, such as Newforma Project Center, allows your firm to sort, search and track data in one place, no matter the file format. It keeps your technology ecosystem intact, integrates with what you already use, and improves project workflow by allowing your team to work in the way they want to while maintaining a 30,000-foot view. To learn more about how a connected environment can save time and money, make your life easier and alleviate potential risk, download the article, “Are You Working in a Connected Environment? You Should Be.”

About the Author: Brian Guidotti is a Solutions Consultant and Customer Success Manager at Newforma. Over the last ten years, he has held multiple positions within Construction IT before transitioning into the software industry, assisting architects and engineers in the implementation of project information management software. Currently, Brian serves as a Project Information Management (PIM) expert by helping Newforma customers with their unique project information challenges, maximizing their investment of Newforma products.

Newforma is a sponsor and exhibitor of PSMJ's annual conference to held October 22-24 in San Diego. THRIVE 2018 is your chance to learn, to network, and to get an eye-opening perspective on what the world’s most successful architecture and engineering firms are doing right now to thrive. This unique annual conference attracts senior-level executives from a wide range of A/E/C organizations located around the world.