As construction continues to adapt to the disruption brought upon the industry in 2020, a heavy emphasis is being put on driving the effectiveness and efficiency of project and field operations teams. One of the main initiatives that many general contractors have taken on is implementing construction software that allows them to share information quickly and easily across the organization.

In recent years, many operations teams have resorted to using Microsoft Excel as a basis for their human resources database. It has proven a strong tool for resource management and workforce planning. While Excel can be a powerful tool for organizing data, the more expansive the spreadsheet system becomes, the more likely it is to be riddled with errors. On top of that, while an Excel spreadsheet could be considered “centralized data,” the lack of permission controls often results in hesitation to share information with the larger team.

Your resource management and workforce strategy are among the few processes that will touch every department in your organization. As a result, the full value that centralized workforce data provides can be lost if that data isn’t readily available for your teams to access and analyze when strategizing for project bidding, resource allocations, marketing and sales, and recruitment and employee retention.

Building trust in data means making the same data available to your larger team and creating a single source of truth for everyone to use as a blueprint to work from. Given the long history of using “gut feel” for decision-making and project planning, the construction industry has had difficulty trusting data through the age of digital transformation. A KPMG study reported that only 35% of executives have high trust in their organization’s data, with 25% stating that they actively distrust it.

Data management has come a long way in a short while, though. In this article, we’ll explore the meaning of “centralized resource management” and some of its benefits.

What is centralized resource management?

While there are tools in place that can significantly help with collecting, processing, and storing data, centralized resource management is as much a concept as it is a software platform. It’s putting the right tech stack in place to unify multiple sources of information and establish a standardized methodology across your entire organization. This is no easy feat. Different work teams are often siloed off, software adoption takes time and costs money, and building a culture that trusts data will take time and energy.

Centralized resource management helps ensure cross-functional access and boost your data to provide the value it represents. If people are your greatest asset, your workforce data would be a close second. That means data collection, storage, and accessibility should be prioritized.

Easy-to-use resource management tools, like Bridgit Bench, built specifically for construction not only help to lighten the load when implementing a data-driven process but also surface relevant information when creating strategies and forecasting project demands for your project pipeline. Let’s explore some of the benefits of centralized resource management.

5 Benefits of centralized resource management

Preserving the integrity of your data

Data integrity may be one of the most important benefits of centralizing your workforce data. Your resource management system should contain no redundant data. The more repeat information you add, the more mistakes you’re likely to make when deciding which resources belong on which project.

With a centralized resource management system in place, your data is always up to date, and redundancies are easily avoided. Potential errors are also surfaced immediately, and operations can quickly remedy any issues.

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DRAMATICALLY IMPROVING YOUR OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY

Maintaining your workforce data in spreadsheets can be incredibly tedious and time-consuming. When your organization’s workforce data is controlled within a single source of truth, like a resource management tool, the team members previously tasked with managing your data can be switched to more profitable core business needs and processes. On top of that, it allows you to completely eliminate manual data entry and processing, which helps to reduce the risk of poor decisions and provides more time to react when project changes occur.

Let’s take a look at a real-life example. With offices across the US, Andersen Construction’s Operations Manager, Mark Horton, spent over 9 hours each week maintaining their workforce data in spreadsheets. While that time was spread over the week, the end result is undeniable – the equivalent of an entire workday was spent copying and pasting data from one spreadsheet to the next. Since implementing a centralized resource management tool, Horton has already cut that time down to three hours, spreading it across their project operations team. Read Andersen’s full case study.

ACHIEVING DATA STANDARDIZATION AND CONSISTENCY

A centralized repository of workforce data allows you to consistently manage and share your data across internal systems and multiple offices. That not only means that everyone is looking at the same information but also that everyone understands the information they’re looking at. Your team will also be able to work with your data more effectively and with less preparation time, helping to optimize your internal processes end to end.

CONTROLLED TRANSPARENCY FOR DIFFERENT LEVELS OF ACCESS

Once you’ve decided to implement centralized resource management, your data will be secured, and users won’t be able to access your workforce data without being given the appropriate permissions. This level of controlled transparency means no need to store private information on multiple platforms or spreadsheets.

Bridgit Bench, for example, allows you to create custom permission groups to provide different levels of access to different work teams. This helps not only control access but also helps to improve collaborative efforts by allowing you to provide more access to your workforce planning process comfortably and helps to break down departmental silos that may exist within your organization.

IMPROVED COMPANY CULTURE THROUGH BETTER COMMUNICATION

By improving collaboration within your organization and providing access to your decision-making data and decision-making process, you allow your team to participate and better understand organizational strategies. Not to mention that errors in planning will ultimately lead to errors and confusion on the job site. Keeping everything up-to-date and accessible helps improve company culture by eliminating errors that could trickle down to the project level. Autodesk & the Field Management Institute (FMI) indicate that poor project data and miscommunication cause 52% of rework.

In addition to the benefits listed above, centralizing your resource management also helps to improve the overall quality of the data you capture and build trust in a data-driven culture within your organization. For more information about construction resource management, read our guide here.