Thursday, June 26, 2008

Lean and Green - Join the Movement

Everywhere you look in our industry, the buzz is centered on 'green' construction, LEED certification, 'lean' project management, etc. An AIA study in 2007 cites the volume of municipalities with green building programs has increased 418% since 1992. Construction Executive Magazine in its' June edition even coins a new term to my vernacular - 'green collar jobs'.

Nobody argues the inherent nobility in the efforts, but standards are a work in progress as is risk management and litigation. Green is front and center, and for those in construction a common question can be 'where do we start'?

A low hanging 'green' fruit is to be had in the minimization and/or elimination of the mass volumes of printed matter associated with construction program and project management. Use of electronic content management and delivery systems to organize, store, retrieve and archive project documentation is here today.

And electronic project management is now financially accesible to small and medium sized businesses using Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery methods. SaaS simply means that you focus on your business of managing construction by offloading the IT aspect of project management. Furthermore, instead of investing in servers and licenses, SaaS allows you to pay for what you use; a cost structure that mirrors your business activity levels.

Online, electronic project management also increases the velocity of business workflow, reducing costly delays in distributing RFIs, CORs, Drawing Revisions etc. Automating your business processes, eliminating data re-entry, and minimizing the hard copy ouput are all readily achieved green practices to embrace today!

As Cianbro Project Manager Brian Watson shares, green building is "not {necessarily} extra work, just a different kind of work" (Pinch, 2008, p.36). Hitting send to distribute your Meeting Minutes isn't more work, it is just different. Let ConstructHub show you how easy it can be to take important first steps in your going green initiatives.