Throughout the last several years, the use of technology in construction has been a reoccurring theme here in both the print and livestream versions of Thoughts from the Field. I have stated on many occasions that the place for construction companies to start their journey into technology is by ditching the paper blueprints and switching to digital drawings. There are several widely used applications on the market today to enable that switch and to leverage the improved productivity of the true digital workflows that are unlocked by making the switch. I even detailed the benefits in a series of short videos using the Fieldwire by Hilti application.
Accelerating Adoption
I have also talked about adapting the capabilities of general-purpose applications and leveraging them inside of the construction industry and have given some examples of applications that have added construction specific workflows or templates to their offerings. One such application is from Progress ShareFile. At its core, this is a secure file sharing application. As we adopt more technology and bring more applications into our tech stack, the need for a good file sharing application quickly becomes evident. Emailing documents has become the norm, but the files we work with throughout the AEC industries (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) often fit into one of the following categories that make sharing from a purpose-built environment a better option:
Large files that can exceed the limits places on many email systems
Files that require more security than typical email attachments
Documents that need to be accessed by many recipients (think – sending plans out to the trades for bid)
Sharing files that would benefit from an automatic verification that they were received and viewed
In addition, every time we email documents to someone, we create a duplicate file that lives on someone else’s system, and it won’t be updated when the original is revised. I am not sure I fully appreciated all of this until I had the opportunity to partner with ShareFile. We had a great discussion on how ShareFile can be used to do things such as:
Using the Outlook plug-in to encrypt emails, or create a secure file sharing link right in your email (so you no longer have to send a copy of the actual file)
Send documents and contracts out for secure electronic signatures
Create fillable forms and send requests to trades to supply information
We also discussed ShareFile’s newly created construction industry templates and workflows that can be used for sub-contractor onboarding, distribution of plans, requesting proposals, and more. You can still view the entire livestream here on The Construction Collaborative in our Video Channel or watch the highlights below.