In commercial construction, correspondence management is the process sending, receiving, and documenting information.
Commercial construction projects are complex; they involve dozens if not hundreds of sub-contractors conducting thousands of tasks. A successful commercial project must be tightly managed. A big part of the project team’s responsibilities is managing all communications to ensure construction moves on schedule, on budget, and follows specifications.
Construction correspondence management is the formalized process of receiving, processing, recording, and sending communications.
Correspondence includes communications such as:
- RFIs
- Submittals
- Change Orders
- Schedule of values
- Payment Applications
- Incident Reports
- Daily Logs
When correspondence is managed poorly, it can have severe consequences on the timelines and profitability of a project.
A Submittal Example
There is a lot of back and forth on a job site between the contractor, sub-contractor, architects, and client.
For example, sub-contractors must prepare and ‘Submit’ product data, shop drawings, samples, or manuals for approval before installing them. At times, the submittal manager is responsible for collecting and managing hundreds if not thousands of these submittals from different trades.
Managing submittals and their correspondence is crucial for the project’s success and timely approvals; so contractors can proceed with installations.
The construction industry relies heavily on paper forms, email, and spreadsheets resulting in the decentralization of information. In return, it causes unnecessary delays in the decision-making processes.
A correspondence management system will help a construction manager centralize project information in one place resulting in fewer delays and faster decisions.