By Sergey Sundukovskiy / Special to Healthcare Facilities Today

The construction of healthcare facilities requires constant vigilance to avoid the overruns in costs and time that can throw a project into disarray. The rise of cloud-based daily construction reporting apps is giving project managers ever-more efficient tools to ensure success.

The new technology can help save time, improve worksite safety and reduce the threat of liability. Construction companies that still use traditional pen-and-paper techniques to document daily compliance and manage projects will be left behind. 

What are the advantages of cloud-based daily reporting software over traditional methods? Let’s take a look.

Mobility

Most project management software can be run on a range of mobile devices as well as laptops and PCs. Project managers can file their daily reports, upload photos, and exchange messages, updates, and safety information in real-time. This not only provides mobility, it saves time.

Liability

Time-stamping features allow for the easy retrieval of documents and photos filed digitally in connection with a project. This can ease legal burdens if issues arise during the course of a project. Construction management apps also allow for the recording of safety violations and can document safety briefings and such potentially sticky regulatory requirements as the storage and handling of hazardous waste.

Visibility

The apps allow project owners to remotely monitor construction site progress. Real-time messaging and email notifications alert project managers of delays, safety violations, and missing reports. This means no more excuses if your foreman neglects to turn in routine compliance reports or files reports that are barely decipherable. It can also help you keep tabs on potentially troublesome crews.

Time-savings

The use of a construction reporting app like Raken can save up to an hour a day with faster and easier daily reporting. It can also ease workloads and time pressures by allowing remote monitoring of job sites and project progress. This cuts down on travel time between sites and the need for superintendents and owners to visit the sites in person. It also reduces the need for frequent physical meetings between onsite managers and project superintendents and eases the paperwork burden. Coworkers in other locations can upload real-time data that is ultimately packaged in a professional project report.

Recordings

A good construction application not only allows superintendents to more easily update daily project reports, it has features that allow project managers to record instances of missed work. This means that weather and other factors in a project’s delay can be noted and uploaded as part of the regular reporting process, so days of missed work don’t come as a surprise and lead to cost overruns or other problems.

Customization

Most good construction management software allows superintendents or project managers to customize the app to their own needs. A good app will not have a one-size-fits-all configuration.

Construction sites can be busy places where things can get easily overlooked. The best applications and construction daily reporting and compliance software can make a project superintendent’s job easier, allowing them to focus on finishing a project on time and on the budget.

Dr. Sergey Sundukovskiy is co-founder and chief technology and product officer for Raken, a provider of mobile technology that creates daily reports from inputs made in the field by superintendents and foremen.