Finding the ideal construction management software can often be a challenging task. It seems a new solution enters the market every day. You need a tool built to meet your team’s needs, both in the present and the future. How do you know which solution is right for your projects and your firm as a whole? The best construction management software won’t ask you to settle. You won’t have to give up one feature to get another. Instead, it will check each and every box on your wishlist.
If you’re searching for construction management software that ticks all the boxes, you’ll love this helpful guide of what to look for.
The foundation of construction is built on collaboration. Each project has multiple stakeholders who need to work together efficiently to deliver the desired results. While each party is united around the common goal of delivering value to the end customers, ensuring effective collaboration can sometimes feel like an uphill battle.
Today, a large-scale construction project isn’t made up of five, 10, or even 20 companies. It’s not uncommon to have over 50 construction firms on a project. Having that many parties involved leaves a lot of room for disparate processes and platforms. In turn, getting everyone on the same page becomes a real challenge.
Your construction management software should be built on a common data environment (CDE), the essential foundation for connecting people, processes, and platforms. A CDE brings all of your project data into one accessible location.
When looking for construction project management software, prioritize solutions that allow for the creation of connected data, workflows, and teams. These solutions provide the following benefits for construction firms:
Managing multiple stakeholders means managing massive amounts of project data. Sharing this data with the various contractors, designers, suppliers, and stakeholders involved in a project increases the risk of data loss. To reduce the risk of loss and close information gaps, focus on construction management software that improves workflows.
Workflows are at the heart of construction projects. The right construction management software will streamline and connect your workflows through collaboration. A shared data environment will ensure that the data is transmitted across field, cost, and project management workflows. Stakeholders will have access to the information they need in real time. The solution will reduce human errors, inefficiencies, and tedious, manual work. Additionally, stakeholders will only have one set of permissions, one login flow, and a single sign-on to manage. This all adds up to higher productivity and improved project outcomes.
Solutions that have a long learning curve can frustrate even the most technologically advanced users. Intuitive, user-friendly interfaces are especially critical in construction, where stakeholders are often on the go and working to meet tight deadlines. They need to be able to get the information they need to complete tasks quickly and efficiently. Technology should make it easier to do so rather than impose barriers to access. Be sure to look for construction management software that makes it simple for field team members to input data and provide updates.
The solution should also be natively mobile, meaning that they are built to work on mobile devices. Tools that are built for desktop and then retrofitted for mobile devices often lack the ease of use that your users are looking for.
To get a better feel for how intuitive a potential solution is, be sure to explore hands-on demos. Have your day-to-day users give the potential solution a spin. Get in to see what kind of support the provider offers. Does the construction management software have real people and reps ready to help you should you need help? Of course, onboarding is essential, but you also need to be able to reach a support team when hiccups occur.
The ideal construction management software will allow you to maintain a strong foundation while growing your firm. Making this happen requires the right data. Data should be central to your growth strategy. After all, the information found in project data will help you find the insights you need to make decisions and drive results.
However, extracting insights from multiple sources isn’t as easy as it sounds. Process automation is essential to reducing the tedious, time-consuming element of data extraction. Top construction software solutions take data insights to the next level and even have machine-learning capabilities built in to quickly convert data into real-time insights, driving present and future success in strategic decision making. The insights from these solutions can help you scale your firm and projects.
Of course, there’s nothing more valuable than hearing feedback from professionals in your industry. Construction management professionals aren’t shy about sharing their feedback on software solutions, and Autodesk Construction Cloud is a favorite. We’ve captured what they have to say about the solution and why it’s so powerful in the infographic below:
*G2’s Market Presence score is a combination of more than 15 data points from G2’s user reviews, publicly available information, and third-party sources. Details on Grid’s criteria can be found here: https://research.g2.com/g2-scoring-methodologies. The Grid® represents the democratic voice of real software users, rather than the subjective opinion of one analyst. Click here to read more about how G2 keeps our reviews trustworthy and unbiased.
