Cost of Hidden Data and Construction Project Delays

Improving Contractor Administration

The cost of hidden data and construction project delays

Improve Contractor Administration

and Reduce Project Delays

The cost of hidden data and construction project delays

The cost of communication breakdowns, rework, and searching for data in construction is staggering at more than $175 billion annually. The numbers necessitate a closer look at industry cause and effect including how improve construction to property information exchange.

It’s important to understand the fundamentals of real property. Build and operation are fragmented industries where the physical asset is the only constant in an orbital universe of owners, management, tenants and service providers. A simple disruption in construction project workflow cascades through a hierarchy of independent stakeholders.

Challenges begin with the independence of project stakeholders but data behind private firewalls is the primary obstacle to achieving industry efficiency. The impact of construction projects hampered by hidden information and poor communications can be astounding with expense and disruption distributed equally across a project’s trade specialists.

As stakeholders in Florida recently discovered hidden data resulted in a two week project delay with additional unbudgeted expense. A routine structural maintenance project was shut down within days of its launch date when it came face-to-faced with incomplete information on previous work.

Research by Dodge Construction Network and ABC suggest contractors overall suffer margin erosion of 6%. The Florida data error cost its contractor 20% on a $1.5 million project. In this case, a record and access to historical property data would have avoided expanding project scope and construction delays.

As stakeholders in Florida recently discovered hidden data resulted in a two week project delay with additional unbudgeted expense. A routine structural maintenance project was shut down within days of its launch date when it came face-to-faced with incomplete information on previous work.

Research by Dodge Construction Network and ABC suggest contractors overall suffer margin erosion of 6%. The Florida data error cost its contractor 20% on a $1.5 million project. In this case, a record and access to historical property data would have avoided expanding project scope and construction delays.

Elusive Data

Almost no one in the Florida case could have known. Technical details were hidden behind air-gapped information at the building department! Structurally, any revealing detail was conceal by previous construction.

The hidden information was more than twenty years old and likely handled by a dozen administrators.

Ownership had changed twice, property management changed as many times and current service providers had no previous knowledge of the asset.

Project stakeholders included an AEC consultant, structural engineer, general contractor and independent contractor(s) supporting property management and ownership. The collective conclusion expanded project scope [as expected] but a ghost in project data remained.

During the first days of project launch, an older building department official recognized historical characteristics in the construction. Knowing what to look for, the official conducted research on in-house documentation and alerted crews of certain performance requirements that delayed the project.

This situation is not isolated. The absence of reliable information has always hampered efficiency in build, construction, maintenance and overall operation of property. Some owners and assets have been better equipped but today’s technology universally break-down these barriers to improve administrative efficiency.

New Frontiers

Digital deliverables contractors prepare today will be instrumental to digitizing build and property operations tomorrow.

The new frontier in digitized operations is dependent on unified methods of transparent construction to property information exchange between fragmented property assets, diverse project stakeholders and anonymous user technology and platforms.

Technology solutions throughout real estate must be portable across properties, jobsites and projects. Service providers of all stripes require seamless communication with the physical property, industry data sources and project stakeholders who need access to the physical asset’s deepest data.

Data Technology Efficiency

The diversity of stakeholders that transition in and out of a property’s service ecosystem challenges efficiency exponentially over time. The absence of digitally documented build, operation and service detail inherently and indirectly price error into the cost of property operation.

Contractor administration bares most of the delays and expense of errors. According to research by Autodesk, FMI, McKinsey and others, communication breakdown, rework, and searching for data cost the U.S. construction industry $177 billion annually.

Advance technology is changing how independent contractors perform administrative duties but markets demand access to data. Data-driven contractor solutions must integrate information from physical assets, build and service projects, stakeholders and the industry details that go into digital deliverables!

The ‘Digital Contractor Qualification Statement’ provides a hosted solution providing contractors with secure AI Data storage, identity management and autonomous management of access and exchange for company data.

These data objects will survive time and personnel as digital assets of the physical property. The information will continue to be updated, augmented and contribute towards long term analytics and operational efficiency. As owners begin collecting data objects via digital deliverables they’ll contribute to improve future property operation and asset valuations.

Inasmuch, technologies that address contractor administrative efficiency is synonymous with the digitization of build and property operation. Consistent reliable data exchange has a positive effect on efficiency in both directions of information flow between the physical asset, property management, tenants, service providers and supply chains.

Deep Data Research

Studies by SLACi, a developer of property data exchange technologies for real estate indicates unified digital access and exchange of industry information improves operational efficiency of routine tasks by 60% to 80% across all project stakeholders.

Administrative autonomy requires a digital exchange of information between the physical property, management teams, contractors and industry said Anthony de Kerf, CEO of SLACi Inc. Achieving autonomy require stakeholders maintain a digital presence in the cloud. Data-driven technologies will integrate a range of public and private information sources to enhance workflow between industry and stakeholders in build and operations.

Incomplete and worst incorrect information on property build, tenant improvements and routine maintenance cost the real estate industry far more than the expense of construction errors. The wrong information causes delays affecting everything from the cost of administration for maintenance and upkeep to scheduled upgrades.

Incorrect detail often accounts for delivery of the wrong materials, laborers not having the right parts on hand, misrouting personnel and poor service provider engagement. It can distort buyer expectations and budgets and feed expired information to AI used in public markets in what the technology industry calls AI slop or hallucinations.

Despite digitization of public records, building department information remains unreliable. Incomplete inaccurate permit information and data behind firewalls can result in less optimum, more expensive construction options and unexpected project disruptions. Dumping a lifetime of incomplete analog files on property management without sufficient depth of detail offers no solution.

Poorly documented tenant improvements lead current and future owners down a lifetime of expensing the cost for contractors to manually discover technical details, tools, methods and techniques required to service the property. Manual discovery can run about 20% of the price property assets pay for routine services.