How Construction Businesses Can Turn Pandemic-Driven Challenges into Successes with e-PlanREVIEW® - e-PlanSoft

The construction industry, like all other industries today, is struggling to maintain business continuity in the face of challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Social distancing and travel restrictions have impacted contractor and construction workforces, supply chains, and government inspection personnel, resulting in reduced availability and heavy delays. Dated procedures exacerbate such issues—new solutions are needed in order to adapt and move forward.

The CDC has provided guidelines for the construction industry to keep workers safe on the job site, and with new safety mandates in place, the construction industry is beginning to resume operations. But they must facilitate safe operations while keeping projects moving forward, efficiently—now and in the future.

Plan reviews have historically been an aspect of construction that included face-to-face interaction and plans in bulky paper rolls, touched by multiple stakeholders. The process is time and space intensive, and also introduces an unnecessary element of risk during public health emergencies, such as the current pandemic.

There is a better way.

The construction industry can turn its safety and social distancing challenges into successes with an electronic plan review model. Cloud-based e-PlanREVIEW® was developed to resolve the challenges you face.

More efficient operations throughout the project—even following constructability reviews

Problem: Scope- and cost-creep

It can be challenging to adhere to budgets and schedules, especially when problems occur, or changes are requested. Such issues commonly result in a time delay and additional cost.

Solution: e-PlanREVIEW® streamlines workflows, so constructability reviews can be completed efficiently and in a timely manner. The platform allows stakeholders to coordinate all aspects of drawings, recommendations, and supporting materials online, and displays all corrections in on-demand reports, so everything is delivered, interpreted, and addressed without travel to the permitting agency and without delay.

Increased collaboration using virtual plan sets

Problem: Limited or delayed collaboration

Due to the need for social distancing and restricted office access, Construction companies must implement efficiency and collaboration while maintaining social distancing and limiting vulnerability to physical documents that are touched by many.

Solution: e-PlanREVIEW® increases collaboration between all involved parties in a construction project via virtual sessions and electronic documents. Every project can utilize electronic plans and each designated user can access the plan set virtually with a secure login. All stakeholders in the project can make changes on a single contained online module that allows concurrent use, markups, and comment capabilities remotely from anywhere on any device with a secure internet connection, in real-time. Meetings that previously required face-to-face collaboration can now occur digitally.

Labor resources can be properly allocated to align with project status updates

Problem: Skeleton crews

Projects are vulnerable to unnecessary delays due to the many changes along the course of a project.

As was pointed out in a recent Deloitte article, “[h]ow business and government entities that exist along the construction program lifecycle respond to COVID-19 is changing hourly, with more businesses and government entities forced to run with skeleton crews or shut down altogether.” It is inevitable that changes will come up that impact construction projects, including travel restrictions, illness, caring for one’s family members, or a multitude of other factors.

Solution:

e-PlanREVIEW® allows the project lead to monitor the project to stay apprised of issues and status. Real-time status updates and email notifications equip you to make adjustments as needed, allocate resources as needed, and keep all stakeholders informed of current and future project changes.

Infrastructure Development Continuity with SaaS Technology

Problem: Halting of critical projects

The pandemic has caused a slowing, and in many instances, a pause to critical projects and their development. The impact has contributed to the economic downturn and interruption to infrastructure development. Construction is necessary to keep the economy moving and productive.

For example, in California alone, construction contributed $111 billion of the state’s GDP of $3 trillion in 2018. The industry employs more than one million people on average in the United States. Specific municipalities also need construction to remain ongoing as they work to react quickly to make places more socially distant-friendly, in addition to moving forward with previously designated infrastructure improvements.

Solution:

e-PlanREVIEW’s SaaS technology positively impacts, by equipping the construction industry and municipalities continuity of their ongoing projects. For example, prior to the pandemic and associated distancing mandates, many forward-thinking agencies had already implemented e-PlanREVIEW® in conjunction with other electronic measures which ultimately affected construction.

Even before the pandemic’s onset, e-PlanSoft™ has led the charge to help construction organizations transition to the digital plan review model with our SaaS technology. The ROI is almost immediate, allowing them to safely resume operations and progress through building and plan reviews without unnecessary delays and faster than ever before.

e-PlanREVIEW® was developed to improve the plan review process and create efficiencies for the AEC industry. This mission is put to the test daily and its success is proven—before, during, and beyond today’s challenges. For more information: