How to Integrate Preconstruction and Operations

In 2023, 28.2% of the American workforce operates on a hybrid model, making collaborating internally and externally, that much more challenging. In an industry that historically operates in silos, it is imperative that preconstruction teams face this challenge head on and actively work on finding solutions to bring internal teams and clients together.  

As expert problem solvers, estimators and preconstruction managers are turning to construction technologies to bring everyone to the table earlier in the life of the project to spot and mitigate risk, make informed project decisions, analyze the success of the project, and build relationships. 

Beck Technology, developers of construction estimating software, DESTINI Estimator, brought together three experienced precon professionals to discuss the standards and best practices of integrating preconstruction with operations.  

Jan Beran, Senior Implementation Specialist at Beck Technology; Landon McQuestion, Director of Preconstruction and Estimating California Division at Balfour Beatty; and Andy O’Nan, Preconstruction Manager at Sebastian Construction Group talk about how you can establish a standardized collaborative process between precon and operations in the webinar below. 

Balfour Beatty has a formal process of collaborating with the field team and it’s dependent on delivery method. For design-build, the superintendent and senior PM are involved in the project early on. They are users of the same estimating software that the preconstruction team uses, and they are active in the estimate, asking questions, and taking notes.  

In other cases, the VP or PX chasing a project submits an estimate request. This request directly becomes the estimate management system where all estimators’ and preconstruction tasks are managed. There are well-defined roles, tasks, and checklists for those reviewing the estimate know exactly what to look for.  

Landon says, “We've really benefited by just having the technologies that we were already using and getting probably more out of it.” 

Sebastian Construction Group also has a formal collaboration process. They bring in three different departments—Preconstruction, Operations, and Client Services.  

For smaller teams, in Jan’s experience, sharing milestones during the conceptual phase is a way to slowly ease into passing the project to operations.  

Giving and Receiving Feedback 

One of the greatest benefits of collaboration is learning from your process and figuring out how to make it better. Can you ensure that there’s a feedback loop between preconstruction and operations?  

For Balfour Beatty, it falls on the preconstruction department to spearhead the communication between ops and precon to give and receive feedback. Landon says, “The field is so focused on getting the project done on time and on budget that you have to hound them for feedback. We have systems for it, but they just get busy, and it gets ignored, so for me, it’s picking up the phone and finding out how it really worked, what we missed, what we can learn from that estimator that bid.”  

When working on a smaller team, Jan held monthly cadence meeting with project leaders to receive feedback about subs. Jan says, “hitting me with everything that went right and everything that went wrong is really an unattainable goal, so try and break that up into monthly chunks and you can have a half hour to an hour of conversation with your project leads to find out what subs are performing well, which ones aren’t, what building systems are working, which ones do we need to try and steer future projects away from…you get better feedback when it's more frequent.” 

One excellent way to give and receive feedback from the field is through surveys and bid day software like DESTINI Bid Day. 

Balfour Beatty created a Smartsheet for operations to evaluate subcontractors. Landon says, “We got feedback from just about every project on what subcontractors are doing because we made it really fast and easy for them.” 

The way we work has changed. Probably indefinitely. Now more than ever, you need to be competitive. Nailing down your collaboration process will set you apart from GCs lagging.  

To read more about the importance of collaboration and communication with not only your internal teams but with owners, read the following blog posts: 

 

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