8 DOCUMENT CONTROL MUST-HAVES FOR CAPITAL CONSTRUCTION
8 MUST-HAVES
As organizations consider their requirements for a capital construction document control solution, a few areas can mean the difference between a tool that works well enough and a solution that makes a meaningful strategic difference.
EVALUATE WITH CARE
The core capabilities of most enterprise-grade document control solutions — cloud connectivity, scalable storage, mobile access, etc. — should be considered table stakes, but many systems struggle to navigate the complexity and changeability of capital construction. As teams evaluate competing solutions, keep these eight capabilities top of mind. They separate the document control solutions suited to complex work from those that are limited to simpler, smaller jobs. During the selection process, consider future needs as well as current business demands. Remember, what works now may not serve an organization as effectively when business environments shift.
8 MUST-HAVES
When purchasing a construction document control system, these features are essential to success of large-scale capital construction projects.
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. ATTRIBUTE-RICH DATA CAPTURE
For project documents, the ability to collect project data in batches while automatically extracting attributes can reduce document capture time by 75%. >>>
2. COMPREHENSIVE SEARCH FUNCTIONALITY
Searching becomes even easier when dynamic folders allow users to go a level deeper than the standard folder trees in most systems. >>>
3. FLEXIBLE DOCUMENT REVIEW AND APPROVAL
In order to increase accountability and ensure project items keep moving forward, teams need a system that tracks exactly where documents stand in the review-and-approval workflow. >>>
4. DEBATE-PROOF DOCUMENT DISTRIBUTION
One of the biggest problems on any project is ensuring the extended project team has access to the most recent documents. >>>
5. INTEGRATED EMAIL REPOSITORY
In order to achieve user adoption, document control must to serve as a central repository for capturing and accessing all the project emails in one place. >>>
6. ADAPTABLE WORKFLOWS
It’s important a document control solution allows organizations to configure workflows consistent with their best practices. >>>