Mobile, hand-held technology fostering greater collaboration and efficiency could have a crucial role in boosting productivity in housebuilding
Around the world, construction and property stakeholders face productivity issues with multiple challenges and opportunities at stake. This was highlighted in articles by BatiScript’s developer Script&Go earlier this year, including Key UK productivity challenges and opportunities. Businesses in the housing sector are particularly affected.
In the UK, housebuilders do not escape productivity issues. Their challenges and opportunities were investigated in subsequent articles, such as The Productivity Conundrum Facing UK Housebuilders Today.
Despite the fact there are a variety of housebuilders operating in the UK, ranging from self-builders and custom builders to volume and, increasingly, offsite and modular housebuilders, a variety of housing types and a range of housing construction procurement routes available, most homes built today are by a monopoly of privately owned volume housebuilders, forming part of low-rise developments, procured via a ‘design and build’ process.
Improving quality and reducing cost
Housebuilding was the subject of a key UK government debate at the start of 2018. This debate led some UK experts to reconsider their supply projections. However, as they pointed out, simply providing new homes is not the key issue – nor is it a question of just changing housing procurement route, changing housing form or changing housing developer profile, instead two key things are required to boost productivity (and societal) outcomes:
*Housing quality and performance needs to be higher.
*Homes need to become less expensive to build and maintain.
So, regardless of who develops and constructs housing, its form or procurement route chosen, to improve productivity two key questions need answering:
How can the quality of housing construction be easily improved?
Through investment in enhanced quality management systems, skills and related solutions for housing construction (enhanced quality assurance and quality control), housing quality can be improved.
By streamlining project reporting processes through digitisation and harnessing the benefits of automation, the use of artificial intelligence and machine-learning (intelligent character recognition and handwriting recognition technology), project participants can contribute to more accurate and higher quality outcomes.
How can the cost of the housing construction process be easily reduced?
By making the housing construction phase quicker, reducing the number of trips back and forth from office to site, and reducing the man hours involved, without compromising quality, the cost of housing construction can be reduced.
By using mobile solutions on hand-held devices (tablets and smartphones) in the field, data, including snagging and issue / nonconformity observations can be collected, manipulated and reported direct from site and synchronised in real time as necessary, even via the cloud.
Going beyond: Meeting the need for greater collaboration and sustainability
The need for greater collaboration and sustainability through digitisation and mobilisation across construction was also outlined in our last whitepaper. In the paper, we explain that the onus to improve the productivity is on all, which includes those in the housing sector, through a collaborative and sustainable effort across the industry. We described the core challenges facing construction stakeholders, the opportunities and outlined how we believe that by understanding these more, all stakeholders should be in a better position to improve their productivity.
Script&Go’s aim is to assist construction stakeholders, housebuilders included, in making informed decisions as to how to not only improve quality and reduce costs, to improve their productivity, but also to go beyond and create a way for their teams to collaborate better and implement more sustainable processes for improved societal outcomes.
It does this by developing intuitive mobile digital solutions that capitalise on advances in inter-device communication and information/data exchange innovation (between PCs, tablets and smartphones) across operating systems. BatiScript is our turnkey solution for the housing sector.
Transforming productivity through BatiScript
Intuitive BatiScript software provides those in the housing sector and others with a useful and easy-to-use tool to respond to the productivity transformation opportunity, with a real opportunity not only for improved quality management and cost reduction but also a means of enhancing collaboration and sustainability.
BatiScript also provides handwriting recognition technology for more intuitive data entry allowing users to digitise their construction management processes further, in the field.
BatiScript clients testify
Using BatiScript software, across operating systems and devices (tablets and smartphones), leads to time/cost efficiencies, higher quality and more collaborative, paper-free processes. Our clients have testified its benefits.
Batiscript improves quality by enhancing the project reporting process (through standardisation and automation of report templates and easy image insertion). BatiScript also makes defect management (in other words ‘snagging’) faster during project delivery (prior to, during and post-handover).
A spokesman from Groupe Lamotte told us in an interview.
“The report system pleased organisations that consult with us as the presentation was the same regardless of who created them.
“It was of great interest prior to and during the delivery phase as once the plans had been inserted into the tablet, defects could be located directly on site and associated with different organisations.”
To discuss your reporting and defect management software needs further contact our team or simply trial BatiScript for yourself.
Please note: this is a commercial profile
Faisal Hamid
UK Country Manager
Script&Go
Tel: +44 7538 999242
www.twitter.com/ScriptandGo_EN
