Technology can help contractors avoid disputes and eliminate rework

23 August 2022

Rework and disputes in construction cost time, money and effort. Joe Hughes, Onsite Construction Solutions Consultant at XYZ Reality explores how a proactive approach to how you plan, manage and validate work can mitigate rework, and avoid costly disputes.

As projects grow in complexity and scale, often with multiple stakeholders, the potential for design coordination issues, build errors, and delays increases exponentially. These risks can lead to a minefield of construction disputes.

A report by cost consultants at Arcadis revealed that the average construction dispute value in the UK was £27.7 million in 2020, an increase of 117% from 2019. While, in North America, construction dispute value rose from $18.8 million in 2019 to $37.9 million in 2020.

Extensive rework is depriving construction businesses of reaching their target revenue and profitability goals year on year. Couple this with a shortage of construction materials, changes in types and specifications during construction, a skills and labor shortage, design changes during construction, design errors made by designers, errors committed in the field, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for project delays which could lead to construction disputes.

This has only been exasperated by the Covid-19 pandemic, as previously halted projects try to keep up the pace and rush to meet project deliverables. Ultimately leading to errors, rework, and disputes. These tighter timeframes call for a proactive approach to construction processes, something which the deployment of technology can dramatically improve.

Here are a few ways advanced construction technology can help you avoid disputes and eliminate rework

Collaborate, Communicate & Coordinate

Poor communication and low visibility in the field is often cited as one of the main reasons for delayed projects, rework, and disputes among construction Contractors and Asset Owners. Using technology, like Augmented Reality (AR), that plugs into your construction management platform allows teams to track progress and check issues and activity in real-time. The collaborative nature of such technology enables contractors to avoid missing deadlines and makes it easier to swiftly resolve changes or errors.

Integrating your construction management platform with Engineering Grade AR™ helps streamline workflows and information flow, providing superior quality control and ultimately avoiding costly disputes.

Validate works in real-time

Removing guesswork and lowering project risks can, without a doubt, reduce the likelihood of disputes. Armed with the tools to validate works in real-time, construction teams can significantly reduce the potential of rework. Early technologies, like laser scanning, allow users to validate works but only after they have been completed, and the costs incurred. This technology can also take several weeks to provide validation data. Using Engineering-Grade AR, teams can validate in real-time and build with confidence, knowing the work they are doing is correct.

By harnessing the power of advanced construction technology, contractors can build it right, first time, eliminating rework and significantly reducing the likelihood of disputes.

Document & track everything

If something is wrong, document it. Is something built out of tolerance? Document it and share visual proof through pictures, and even video if possible. Is the site design not matching the plans? Make a note of it, and again take photos as proof. Is your work correct and you don’t want to get the blame for others' errors? In the off chance there’s a dispute, visual proof through timestamped photos and videos can work in your favor when you make your case that it wasn’t your team that made the errors.

Augmented Reality technology has taken this process to the next level. With our Engineering-Grade AR headset, the Atom, users can capture images of any clashes, errors, deviations, and even correct works on-site, assign them to a stakeholder anywhere in the world and track these in real-time. Our Field Application Engineers work collaboratively with the on-site team to provide the Contractor and Clients with the most up-to-date data, spotting errors early, and ensuring issues and results are tracked and communicated immediately.

Enable quality assurance

Quality assurance is a crucial concern for contractors, fail to uphold the high standards of work required and you’ll impact project delivery and could face dispute action.

To ensure superior levels of quality at every step of the construction process, contractors and subcontractors are leveraging and deploying advanced Augmented Reality technology on-site to meet their quality assurance goals, boost productivity and streamline workflows. By pinpointing errors early, or even before they happen, teams can ensure their works are to the correct specifications and build with confidence to avoid inaccuracies and errors that would otherwise be identified too late.

Proactively monitoring and tracking quality whilst works are on-going will help teams eliminate rework and avoid disputes.

The use of technology will help construction teams better plan and execute works on their projects, which is likely to reduce the number of disputes. Advanced technology will not only make contractors' operations more efficient but will minimize the risk of litigation as well.

Avoid costly construction disputes, Book a demo today.