How to avoid a project management communication breakdown on site
Date: 15 January 2015
By Wes Simmons of Global Construction
When a company communicates effectively internally, it is far more likely to provide effective and unified communications to external organisations.
It was the American business writer Thomas J. Peters who famously said that “communication is everyone’s panacea for everything”. When it comes to maximising efficiency across the construction sector, effective communication really is the cure for a thousand ailments.
Even though the UKs economy is now growing faster than any other G7 nation, it will take a while to recover from the past five years of challenging market conditions.
The recession may have been painful for many construction companies, but it has engendered a focus on efficiency that applies to far more than just cost and financial management.
There are numerous ways in which effective communications can help to identify and resolve problems on projects earlier and even squeeze extra profits from each project.
Don’t waste resources
Imagine a company simultaneously undertaking two construction projects. Both developments require the use of plant for piling, which has been hired at considerable expense. The plant, however, is lying idle at site A due to last week’s discovery of unrecorded underground pipes. Progress has also ground to a halt over at site B, because nothing can be done until the piling rig arrives on-site.
In this scenario, it’s easy to see how a lack of internal communication has led to a waste of resource that will inevitably drive up overall project costs.
If everyone in the company knew what their colleagues were doing, resources could be deployed to optimise utilisation. Many companies are guilty of similarly ineffective resource management. Often without even realising it.