Guide

Construction projects and remote work almost seem counterintuitive. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, managing a team remotely wasn’t seen too often, but as 2020 began, the entire world shifted the way in which people work. When dealing with construction projects, successfully managing your capital project team virtually directly translates to the success of your project.

While remote teams bring their challenges in the construction industry, it also brings many positive qualities that can increase productivity and reduce costs. Construction is notoriously one of the least digitized industries, second to agriculture. Project sites across multiple locations, multiple contractors (and subcontractors), and many other variables make managing your team challenging. But, outlined below are the top tips to successfully overcome this hurdle.

It’s not a secret that the construction industry is slow to adopt new technology. Still, we’ve come a long way in recent years with the addition of tools like GIS mapping, scheduling software, project management software, e-signatures, and other productivity tools. These tools are great, but often get complicated when your remote team members use them in silos. Systems need to communicate with one another to ensure you can trust the data you receive.

Trusting your technology to work together is extremely important for creating reliable data and avoiding costly errors.

• Bring your technology together in one platform, so all team members work with the same, accurate information.
• Create approval workflows that work for your agency’s specific requirements.
• Digitize forms to ensure team members can get the correct information into your system in real time.

Real-life benefits: The City of Lincoln , Nebraska, increased productivity and document retrieval speed by 70% through the implementation of technology within their agency.

One essential component of successfully managing a remote team is checking in with your employees frequently, especially new employees who have been onboarded virtually. Poor onboarding of new employees can cost your agency valuable time, money, and resources. To get your new employees off to a running start, you’ll want to ensure the experience is as seamless as possible.

• Using one system for all employees will ensure that your new hire can access accurate information critical to their new role. Create a detailed, consistent onboarding plan for all new hires and collect feedback from each to continuously improve the experience.
• Assign an onboarding liaison who can help your new hire navigate the company’s culture and expectations and learn the new system. Having a mentor explain how systems and processes are completed and answer any questions using digital tools will reduce the risk of error.
• It can be hard to determine where your role fits within the organization, especially when you join a team in a remote environment. Set clear goals and expectations, and check in often to ensure the employee has the right plans and tools for success.

Real-life benefits: Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation has moved all 1,000 internal team members online by using the same system to streamline data collection, reporting, and validation, making it easy for new hires to hit the ground running.

Using a cloud-based capital program management system to manage your capital programs will undoubtedly make managing a remote team more straightforward. By consolidating your financial, scheduling, and funding source data into a single location, you’ll ensure that your entire team is working with the same information. Empower your team to plan, track, automate, and manage funds, budgets, and schedules anywhere.

• Have the ability to know the status of your programs, with a bird’s-eye view of every project and program, with real-time reports and dashboards that give you the option to drill down to the most granular detail.
• Get everyone on the same page with an up-to-date view of the latest plans, documents, and changes for all internal and external stakeholders.
• A solution built 100% in the cloud can be implemented and deployed quickly, and can be used from any mobile device or browser.

Real-life benefits: Using a cloud-based capital program management system, the City of Las Vegas, Nevada, automatically generates its CIP book, saving three to four months each year during the capital planning process. In addition, everyone from project managers up through the City Council has real-time visibility into funding sources, project schedules, and budgets.

Communication plays a crucial role in managing a remote team. Without face-to-face time, frequently keeping in touch with your team is of the utmost importance. Have a well-defined communication strategy in place and tools to support your staff. With project team members scattered across worksites, offices, and home offices, you’ll want to keep everyone in sync and working towards the same goals.

• Encourage daily check-ins with your project team and be available to address any questions or issues that may arise. Tools such as Zoom are a great way to quickly communicate back and forth with one another.
• Beyond the project, it’s important to check in on your team personally and ensure they need the support to succeed.
• Be proactive with your team, set clear and concise expectations from the beginning, and try to keep your company’s culture at the forefront, even if from afar.

Real-life benefits: As we move into a post-pandemic work environment, organizations with clearer communication are seeing benefits directly tied to employees’ well-being and productivity, according to a recent McKinsey survey of employees.

It is also vital to successfully manage your contractors and subcontractors remotely, even if you are not physically at a project site. You need to equip them to deliver accurate and timely information to your agency to avoid schedule delays and cost overruns. Your goal is to reduce the time spent managing consultants so you can focus on the larger project at hand.

• Move to paperless contracts and start projects on the right foot with clearly defined contracts and an itemized scope.
• Automating your pay estimates will help manage any changes and computing payments using those handy workflows. You can then quickly generate pay estimates based on the work done, materials on hand, advances, retention, and adjustments.
• Mobilize your contractors with permissions-based access to your systems, allowing them to update data directly from the field.

Use the tips and tools above to fuel your agency to success, remotely and in person.  Communicating accurately and often with your team is crucial. Use available technology to set up new and existing team members, contractors, and subcontractors for success.

Real-life benefits: The Wisconsin DOT has brought consultants onto their e-contracting portal, which has improved transparency, collaboration, and efficiency across the contract pre-award and award processes.