The bane of the construction engineer
As a construction engineer managing works out on the job site, you are faced with issues daily. If you step back for a moment and look at your average day, at least half of your time is likely spent on solving unexpected issues rather than getting things built.
What’s more, these issues often build up over time and turn your job into a reactive spiral of doom. Emails flying around, endless meetings and unnecessary arguments consume your days. Let’s be honest, it can all feel like a bit of a grind.
Getting back to your happy place
Things feel good when they are under control and the focus is on getting things built. Issues will always occur but even in the most chaotic projects, a simple process and system can go a long way to making your life easier.
This is where the Shape Issues app comes into play. It is designed by real construction people and is as simple to use as WhatsApp, so your team can get up and running fast.
This simplicity is combined with powerful workflows and categorisation under the hood which means that you have all your information structured and in one place.
Shape Issues enables you to manage and collaborate easily with everyone involved in sorting out any kind of issue. It could be access for a work front, a design problem, quality corrections, missing documents or materials, whatever it is, your team can capture this easily.
Once something is captured the fun begins, you now have a dedicated space to track and collaborate on getting the issue sorted out. You assign a responsible person, share images and files, chat and pull other people and organisations into the conversation until the issue is resolved.
Less emails, less meetings, less nonsense filling up your days. Beautiful.
Fast and easy to roll out
Rolling out new apps on site can be a bit of a pain. Common barriers are, “not-another-app-ism”, getting cost sign-off, complicated set up and training. You can have Shape Issues set up and rolling in less than 5 minutes and it is free so no issues getting commercial sign off. It is easy to use with no training required even for the most technophobic site supervisor you can think of.
Keep the commercial team well fed
The commercial guys live on a diet of something they call “contemporaneous records”. That’s fancy commercial speak for records that were taken at the time of an event. They need this for their claims, counter-claims and whatever it is they need to get suited up for.
Shape Issues can export the full history of any issue into a pdf. It lets you pick and choose exactly which parts of the history you include in case there is anything “unprofessional” in the comments.
Actually you can go one better and just let the commercial team access the app and see all the live issues. That way they can just help themselves to whichever records they need.
Get the PM off your back
Project managers hassle you because they don’t feel like they have visibility of what is going on. This is why they are always looking for status reports and setting up meetings. You can give them access to the live updates of any issue and they can monitor what is going on in the live timeline which is kind of like a construction Instagram feed. If that’s not enough we have dashboards that answer their most common questions so they don’t have to keep asking you all the time.
No need to be a post box for the designer
No more wasting time with multiple intermediaries between the person doing the work and the person revising the design. If an issue is raised in the field you can add the designer to the conversation and get it solved fast there and then. Afterwards you can PDF the history of the issue as part of any required formal RFI or commercial process.
Keep your supply chain in line
With many suppliers involved in issues it can be hard to herd them all in the right direction and keep them focused on the right priorities. When things go wrong they love finger pointing but facts are facts and when you capture and track everything in one place the facts are clear for everyone to see. This keeps conversations about solving the problem rather than opinions over whose fault it is.
Worried about them using this against you? Fun fact: they are capturing all this info anyway for their claims you just don’t know about it until further down the line. At least this way you know straight away and can take steps to mitigate. That combined with all the issues you have captured that they are causing will make conversations a bit more balanced and reasonable.
Show your client you have everything under control
Your client really just wants to see that you have your act together with everything under control. You can keep them in the loop on key issues they care about in real time. Showing them you have a live system to manage your issues is a huge confidence booster and when they ask you tricky questions about what is happening you have the answers at your finger-tips.
But what about all my secrets?
The contractual realities mean that it is unreasonable to expect everyone to be airing their dirty laundry to each other. Mistakes are made and sometimes we just want to fix them ourselves silently without shouting from the rooftops about it. Shape Issues is built with privacy in mind, issues are only visible to other organisations you choose to share them with and there is even a private chat for every issue that only your team can see.
What more do you need?
Shape Issues will help you and you team take back control of your project. With our freemium plan and simple setup, nothing is stopping you from giving it a go.
