When one thinks of the construction and engineering industries, paperwork is probably the last thing that comes to mind. But to manage large machinery, huge amounts of raw materials, building safety, and overall employee operations, anyone in the industry can share tales of woe over the mounds of documents that need to be processed, such as: drawings, Building Information Models (BIMs), contracts, inspection records, bids, tenders, incident reports, and more.

Success in any project therefore, requires organization. Automated Document Management Software is the best way to get started. Some of the early benefits include:

Document Consistency
Final plans are never final. But confusion over documents can be problematic. Consider this: Workers are assembling the structure according to now obsolete plans that are missing the latest updates. When the engineer, or the inspectors see this, the work will have to be destroyed and redone.
Version Control features ensure that all the working documents are automatically updated with the latest revisions, this ensures that all teams are literally “on the same page”, and eliminates these embarrassing and costly reworks.

Secure Access, Anywhere
A construction project involves almost as many different groups and teams as it does different types of documents. Contractors, inspectors, subcontractors, human resources, site safety, engineers, architects. All have different access needs to various documents.

A strong document management system organizes these documents using detailed Document Records. These records contain Automatically Extract key data to create summaries. 

User Permissions  and User Groups can be employed to ensure that only some teams have access to sensitive information like budgets and payroll info, but that everyone has access to blueprints, and customer specifications. 

An additional benefit is that this information can be accessed anywhere. Instead of racing to the construction site trailer for documents before a big meeting, every document can be pulled up from a laptop or mobile device.

Reminders
Avoid missing deadlines and scheduling errors by automatically pulling dates from document records to create Deadline Notifications.

Connecting Teams
Document Sharing makes it easy to share information with the different teams: engineers can send their solutions to the architects, who can in turn send their plans to the contractors. Communication tools like Real-Time Chat features allow different teams to add their comments directly to documents and document records, saving time and increasing productivity. 

Process Automation
These communication tools boost the effectiveness of Workflows and Approvals. When a design is revised, several teams need to review the rewrite and comment. The simplest and most efficient way to do that is through automated Workflows and Approvals, which automatically routes documents to the right people under a highly visible process.

Transparency

The transparency of automated workflows is reinforced through tools like Audit Trails, which show all the revisions and rewrites made to document. This ensures compliance to regulations, and helps assure clients that project is going well. 

Automated Document Management is the one power tool this industry cannot do without!

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