3 DOCUMENT CONTROL PRACTICES FOR COMPLEX PROJECTS
Learn how search, standardization, and accountability keep projects on track and headed toward profitability
TO PROTECT PROFITS, LOOK TO UPDATED DOCUMENT CONTROL
In an unpredictable world, you can count on a capital construction project exceeding its schedule and budget. In fact, capital construction projects typically run 20% beyond their estimated timeline and 80% over budget.[1] Profits are on the line, and they’re already slim, averaging 2.4%[2] for general contractors in capital construction. Projects are only getting more complex, and external pressures are mounting too, as contractors deal with workforce shortages, supply chain challenges, and new delivery and contracting models. Without digital tools able to handle increasing complexity, contractors face an unwelcome choice: spend time and money managing software that’s not up to the task, or deal with margin-eroding rework and disputes. When the success or failure of a project hinges on the right people having the right information at the right time – and it always does – document control plays a critical role. Any organization seriously pursuing project certainty and on-time completion has no choice but to examine its document control capabilities. The right approach to document control for your complex projects is the one that protects and even increases margins, and it requires three critical shifts in practice.
CAPITAL PROJECTS
Construction Projects Face Major Delays, Cost Overruns and Slim Profits
Capital construction projects typically run 20% beyond their estimated timeline
Capital construction projects typically run 80% over budget
General Contractors average 2.4% profits with Capital construction projects
BUSINESS IMPROVEMENTS TO EXPECT WITH GREAT DOCUMENT CONTROL
Great document control offers peace of mind, adaptability, and efficient workflows, and the business improvements extend even beyond those immediate improvements. By consolidating processes and communications into a single resource, organizations create a more consistent and scalable operating model. When contributors aren’t trapped digging through email threads and folder structures to confirm information, they’re free to move the build forward.
IN 2020, GLOBAL CONTRACTORS LOST $1.8 TRILLION IN REVENUE DUE TO INACCURATE, INCOMPLETE, OR INCONSISTENT DATA.[3]
KEEP WORK MOVING WITH EFFECTIVE SEARCH
Complex projects inevitably result in a virtually unmanageable volume of documentation, compounded by scores of team members and stakeholders generating comments, questions, approvals, and all manner of data. Without the right tools in place to manage the complexity and volume of documents and related workflows, teams bog down in a time-consuming, error-prone morass of manual processes. At best, teams spend an outsized portion of time and resources consolidate feedback, chasing approvals, and maintaining files structures. At worst, disorganized document control can doom a project to millions of dollars of rework and overruns. In a critical sense, inadequate tools are to blame. Project teams simply cannot scale and automate their processes without tools that can handle project complexity. Instead, they find themselves trapped into poor practices such as:
1 Relying on inflexible or limited options for tagging, filing, and retrieving documents;
2 Using mistake-prone approaches like naming conventions and manual version control to ensure that the latest, approved version of documents are always referenced;
3 Working around limitations on file size or volume;
4 Setting inadequately detailed permissions and access rules;
5 Following (or working around) pre-set approval, review, or request processes that don’t map to the complexity of the business; and
6 Adapting business processes to the constraints of their software.
Contractors serious about keeping work moving need to shift to practices that support efficiency and scale on document control. While shortfalls in any area above can hobble a project, two key areas of excellence in document control practices stand out. First, it’s critical to ensure that all team members can access the approved documents they need at the moment they need to. Too much time spent searching is a delay in and of itself. Compound that wasted time with an unapproved or incorrect drawing or document and the potential for serious delays skyrockets. Fixed file structures or limited tagging options are a recipe for mistakes during upload, and likely to lead to difficulty retrieving the right file. Instead, aim to build the comprehensive and flexible document control approach that frees teams to quickly find what they need so they can focus on higher value tasks. Build in processes like:
BUILD IN DOCUMENT CONTROL PROCESSES LIKE:
CREATING PACKAGES
Creating packages so team members get notifications of changes.
ESTABLISING DISTRIBUTION GROUPS
Establishing distribution groups whose members receive new documents automatically when set conditions are met.
MOBILE ACCESS
Mobile access that leans on smart folders to make sure team members get what they need.
Second, ensure that flexible settings empower project leads and administrators to create the specific paths needed for various approvals, reviews, and other workflows. Keep in mind the need for different workflows to accommodate the various document types. Part of efficiency is ensuring that review processes don't waste the time of people whose feedback isn't needed. When the review and approval structure is built into the document control solution, teams can ensure transparency and integrity throughout the project lifecycle and save time confirming approvals and communications. Such efficiencies are especially critical than in complex projects. It’s also critical to designate which stakeholders will and won’t have document access and permissions.
REWORK ACCOUNTS FOR BETWEEN 2% AND 20% OF TOTAL PROJECT COSTS.[4]
Construction professionals spend 35% of an average 40-hour work week on tasks that don’t move the project forward, like looking for documents, resolving conflicts, and fixing mistakes. [5]
WHEN EXCEPTIONAL DOCUMENT CONTROL BECOMES CRITICAL
Document control is critical to the success of any project, but as the scope, scale, and complexity of work continues to grow, the need for reliable document control grows exponentially. Large projects tend to introduce greater complexity, more collaborators, and higher stakes, but with growth comes an even greater need for clean records and regulatory accountability. The financial implications aside, megaprojects impact the lives and livelihoods of thousands of workers and their communities. Document control protects organizations from avoidable mistakes and unnecessary delays while protecting them from litigation and audits. Exceptional document control allows organizations to pursue more ambitious work, knowing they’ll have the means to rise to the challenge. Still skeptical? Do a little math. Cutting the average review time from 8 days to 5, or from 5 to 3, multiplied across the hundreds of thousands of documents a complex project can produce, and you end up with significant financial value.
STANDARDIZE YOUR REPEATABLE PROCESSES
Most contractors use a document management tool that performs a set series of functions with little variance—meaning anything that doesn’t fit into the established process requires some sort of improvisation. As more and more teams run into the same or similar problems, they may each discover new paths for resolving those challenges. For example, Team A daisy chains together an internal workaround with Excel spreadsheets, an online integration tool, and another internal solution. Team B outsources the problem to a vendor that builds a custom app, while Team C signs up for an annual contract with a third-party vendor. In the end, the organization has three competing workflows for completing the same task. Conflicting or non-standard processes put avoidable stress on the organization.
70% of construction professionals build makeshift workarounds for organizing files.[6]
There’s a better path than crafting elaborate workarounds. By embracing flexible document control practices, teams can build – and standardize – processes to better meet their needs. Just like on the job site, the objective is to let the tools, not the people, do the heavy lifting. When leveraged appropriately, robust document control tools shift complexity away from the user and into the background, creating an experience that’s easier to navigate for teams focused on project execution. For example, chasing approvals can often feel exhausting and chaotic to engineers or field teams. They may in turn overburden review managers, document controllers, or project leads by relying on those roles to chase stakeholders, schedule review meetings, and consolidate feedback. For teams struggling with overrun eating into their profit margins, flexible automations within document control reduce the burden of chasing approvals. The tools help document controllers build a the right number and variety of preset approval or communication processes. They can include automated reminders so any tardy stakeholders are immediately notified once they’re past the due date. And by connecting all stakeholders to a single document control environment, organizations can leverage a multi-directional workflow model, or allow multiple stakeholders to contribute simultaneously rather than expecting each to wait for preceding reviewers to submit their changes. When organizations standardize their processes according to their needs, rather than following their tools, they can confidently scale workflows into other divisions or projects and promote more efficient organizational growth. For example:
ADAPTABLE
Adaptable templates for forms and RFIs make it easy to respond to project inquiries.
STANDARDIZED
Standardized asset delivery and turnover builds consistency and client trust.
STREAMLINED
Streamlined team collaboration across functions improves overall efficiency and communication.
CUSTOMIZED
Customized processes across almost any level of granularity better meet the needs of any organization.
CHALLENGES WITH “ALL-PURPOSE” DOCUMENT SOLUTIONS
All-purpose document control is a bit of a misnomer. Solutions like Box and Google Drive provide digital storage for shared documents but struggle to offer any actual control. They’re built for document management—to serve as a repository for whatever information teams need to stash somewhere, but all-purpose solutions lack the organization, automation, and customization options required to keep pace with the complexities of capital construction. Adding advanced capabilities to such systems depends on expensive hiring to keep data and documentation ready for use by stakeholders. Regulation and project sensitivity raise the stakes: 29% of all data breaches are due to weaknesses not in the organization’s cybersecurity environment but in the environment of their third-party vendors.[7] All-purpose solutions simply are not designed to support highly sensitive, complex projects.
[6] https://www.autodesk.com/blogs/construction/construction-industry-recovery-survey/
[7] https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/100447-third-party-attack-vectors-are-responsible-for-29-of-breaches
ENSURE ACCOUNTABILITY TO PROTECT PROFITS
Disagreements, questions, and even legal disputes become more likely – and more costly – as projects become more complex. With more collaborators and organizations involved, the possibility of miscommunication rises, and with it, the possibility of wasting time researching a resolution. When communication, transmittals, RFIs, and approvals have been handled via email and attachments, definitively answering even a simple question about accountability can involve a complex and time-intensive investigation. Everyone benefits from clear accountability and quick resolution to questions or disputes. Contractors interested in keeping projects moving swiftly – and protecting their own profits in the process – need to shift their document control practices to ensure that disputes are both rare and easily resolved. Beyond collaboration, scalability, review, and automation, the modern document controls quickly resolve disputes through superior accountability, transparency, and auditability. It’s one thing to have documents somewhere that teams can dig through and reference in the event of a dispute. It’s something else entirely when field teams can quickly reference a drawing, document, or form and immediately resolve questions about what was approved, by whom, and when – not to mention who downloaded a document and when. The accountability empowered by a robust document control suite helps teams quickly review decisions in the event of an audit or dispute that mere document management cannot support.
TO
DOCUMENTS
Every $1 billion in project value generates between 30,000 and 40,000 documents.[8]
By embracing advanced document control practices, contractors support alignment and accountability. The right document control approach empowers teams to:
- Consolidate, sort, and connect deliverables, creating a logical flow of communication, decisions, and approvals across a document register.
- Deliver information to the right personnel, without delay.
- Ensure that notification of changes is timely and reaches all concerned.
- Confirm precisely who approved what drawings and documents and when through deliberate and diligent records.
- Protect documents against human error with permanent and accessible version controls.
WHAT YOUR DOCUMENT CONTROLLER ALREADY KNOWS
As your document controller would tell you, document management and document control are not the same.
Document management digitally organizes and safely stores your documents. It makes them accessible to those who should have access. Document control pursues organizational efficiency while protecting the integrity and security of documents and their history. In contrast to document management, document control adds several elements, including:
- Quality and consistency, applied through templates, guidelines, and standards.
- Detailed tagging and categorizing to ensure that documents can be found by varied users, and to make turnover seamless.
- Meticulous version control that tracks the changes, comments, and approval a document does through.
- Creating and applying a trackable review and approval process to documents.
- Ensuring security and permission-driven access to documents, information, and tasks.
TAKING THE NEXT STEP
Just fifteen years ago, digital document management was a revolutionary offering. Teams moved on from paper, digitizing their traditional processes and making handoff easier and more reliable. Organizations could condense massive amounts of information onto a series of hard drives and, eventually, offload those assets entirely into the cloud. Document management was a step in the right direction, but document control represents a leap forward that’s especially critical for contractors in capital construction. By implementing modern document control practices, contractors gain improved collaboration, scalability, and transparency to the processes involved in controlling, approving, distributing, and routing their documents and forms – critical to improving margins and driving performance. Capital construction projects, and megaprojects in particular, will never get any simpler. As regulation, competition, and innovation continue to shape project outcomes, contractors face an increasingly urgent need to develop new, agile approaches for delivering profitably on expectations.
ABOUT INEIGHT
InEight is a leader in construction project controls software, empowering over 850 companies taking on challenging projects in industries including construction and engineering; transportation infrastructure; mining; water; power and renewables; and oil, gas and chemical. Uniquely suited to capital construction and other complex work, our integrated, modular software manages projects worth over $1 trillion globally, taking control of project information management, costs, schedules, contracts, and construction operations, and delivering insights with advanced analytics and AI. InEight's solutions adapt and scale to meet the dynamic needs of modern construction, driving operational excellence and successful project outcomes. For more information, follow InEight on LinkedIn or visit InEight.com. © 2025 InEight, Inc. All Rights Reserved