The construction industry is more than just people who work the equipment needed to build a structure. Furthermore, there are several different types of programs that the industry uses to take a structure from the concept stage to physical reality. This article will go into detail on five of those software packages.
Project Software
This is where the engineers and architects come into play as it is too rare to find a project that was started before a layout was sketched out. These are very advanced drawing programs that help to visualize what a structure will look like before it is ever made into a real thing. In addition to using the illustrations created by such programs so that the hands-on construction teams have a guideline to build the actual structure, such programs can also be used to double-check any potential problems, like features that fail to meet certain building codes, well before any costly construction materials have been brought to the building site and put to work.
Interdepartmental Communications
This is the sort of program that a construction company needs when it involves multiple aspects of a job, like setting a foundation, installing the electrical infrastructure, or painting up the property. In short, you can think of it as construction collaboration software. If a project or department lead opens up such software to get a look at how one step in finishing the wing of a major building, they can go ahead and touch base with the next department of workers to go in and start work.
This sort of software can also be useful to have when discrepancies arise between different parts of a company working on the same project. If one department is having issues that another department is concerned about, they can use programs like Slack or even Discord to quickly figure out what is going wrong and hammer out the best solutions for dealing with those issues.
Accounting Software
Whether an operation is rudimentary enough to use Notepad, Quicken, or even the invoice system of PayPal, a proper construction outfit needs to keep an accurate count of how much money is coming into the business, how much is flowing out of it and to which parties that money is coming from and/or going to. These sorts of programs can give a concrete assessment of the company’s financials so that the company can:
- Remain solvent.
- View a breakdown of where the company’s budgeting goes between different departments.
- Compare and contrast different fiscal periods to gauge whether the company has plateaued, has lost money, or is currently enjoying great success.
Documentation Management
In their most basic forms, these sorts of programs serve as a file cabinet for every document related to a particular project. This means that it lists all of the employees, contractors, work hours, and anything else that “shows the work” that went into a project from the idea stage to its final, physical state. This sort of software can also be quite useful to any project lead who wants to double-check one draft of a project’s blueprints against another one.
Materials Management
Put simply, this sort of software is used to give an accurate breakdown of a construction company’s inventory of materials. This can come in handy for tracking the progress of a particular project-if the daily assessment of materials shows that more are being used than projections anticipated, quality material management software can bring this issue to the attention of the relevant party for closer analysis. Furthermore, a good program for this sort of information can let its users narrow down their search for how many units of a given material remain in-house, how many are currently being used for a project, and how many of them are expected to arrive from material suppliers.
Closing Time
While the construction sector makes use of several different specialized programs, most of them can be broken down into five categories that one or more departments may need to access. As a reminder, those programs cover the business’ finances, manage its teams, individual projects, all of the documentation and red tape and assess all of its materials, be they already in use, inventoried, or incoming.
