Despite technological advances and collaborative toolsets being introduced daily, one of the biggest hurdles facing businesses today is ensuring proper alignment and efficient communications between their geographically separated teams. Whether teams are located minutes or flights away from a job site, collaborating with separate teams is always a challenge.
So how can a digital workplace help you overcome these barriers and bridge information gaps between roles? How do you ensure seamless collaboration with stakeholders located near and far?
We must first understand three barriers to remote collaboration to address these issues.
Top 3 challenges facing geographically separated teams
Challenge #1: Delayed response time
With different team members spread across different time zones, it becomes difficult to quickly get the answers you need from the right person. Calls, texts or emails go unanswered, causing avoidable delays and bottlenecks. Over time, this causes a misalignment between teams and functions, leading to more serious administrative and construction issues.
Challenge no. 2: Not conveying the urgency of matters
The practice of staggered and infrequent communications between on-site and remote teams typically results in team members not understanding or articulating the importance of specific issues. Without a consolidated source of truth, team members located several hours apart or even in different countries find it challenging to fully understand each stage of development. This also makes it difficult to articulate and distinguish priorities in situ without being physically there.
Challenge no.3: Scattered and incomplete documentation
Aligning project documentation between local and remote teams using only emails and ad-hoc tags often results in incomplete folders and files. Miscommunication exacerbates this situation, and companies that rely on a mix of scattered physical and digital documentation will face challenges later on. These include difficulties in developing accurate as-built documentation without leveraging technology. Ultimately, resisting innovation threatens to expose these companies to potential regulatory compliance issues and reputational repercussions.
How digital workplaces help solve them
Fast and seamless communication across borders
Whether it’s remote or on-site teams, using messaging, personalized notifications and labels is key to bringing everyone together and ensuring the right message gets to the right person quickly. Faster response times encourage faster decisions and faster implementation of change orders or adjustments when needed. Leveraging a cloud-based digital workplace allows users to raise issues, make recommendations, sign off, and approve work onsite in minutes, not hours or days.
Inch-accurate, context-rich virtual tours of the virtual site
Instead of relying on 2D photos or PDF documents to align different project teams in regular progress meetings, digital workplaces allow for visual tours at any time. Architects, contractors, stakeholders and owners can scroll through high-definition 360° photos and get relevant information instantly, reducing communication time to seconds. The added benefit of leveraging inch-accurate imagery with 360° photos is to virtually obtain measurements of specific sections of the project. This enables remote site inspections resulting in faster progress and reduces red tape for approvals despite geographical separation.
The digitization of site documentation enables seamless democratization between multiple stakeholders and teams.
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Detailed, complete and compatible as-built documentation
Digital workstations like FARO Sphere® XG allow you to store and archive project documentation in an orderly and intelligent way. This ensures that users accessing the platform can easily find the information they need. The adoption of as-built digital documentation as the primary archiving method is also a significant time saver, as multiple formats (2D photos, 3D point clouds, PDF markups) are now stored within a same project and are ordered chronologically. A transparent, unified platform that hosts com-built historical data comparable to intent models enables rapid retrieval and playback of project information. This serves a range of use cases, from payment requests to meeting regulatory obligations.
Conclusion: Digital workplaces, working better together or apart
As illustrated, digital workplaces are an innovative, multifaceted solution that helps businesses bridge the collaborative gaps between on-site and remote teams. A digital workplace enables efficient democratization of information while optimizing project visibility for all teams and stakeholders involved. As technologies improve, so will the features and services of these innovative tools. Construction companies that quickly adopt and integrate modern solutions into their teams are ultimately poised to realize benefits and gains in collaboration and productivity, placing them above the rest.
