Construction Data Portals: 24/7 Collaboration Tools

Are you familiar with the concept of a web portal, sometimes referred to as a neutral platform in the cloud?

Portals provide users with the ability to view — and sometimes update — information developed by one or more systems from a single web-based location.

What can a construction portal do for your construction process — inside and outside the company, including vendors and home buyers?  Effective portals improve communication and collaboration by providing real-time data access to enterprise information.

FieldCollaborate Portal Offers 24/7 Vendor Access 

Let's take a look at a real-world example.  Vendors can login to CPS' FieldCollaborate Portal — at any time, 24/7 — and view their current construction schedules, punch items and safety assessments.  And, they're able to pull up builder documents and drawings.

Home buyers, on the other hand, login to the FieldCollaborate Portal to find their home's schedule and stage-of-construction photos.  The Portal keeps home buyers actively engaged throughout the home buying/construction cycle, which in many areas can take nine months from the time of contract acceptance to closing.

Home builders use the Portal, as well, to share information within the enterprise. When we consider the entire set of participants — the builder, vendors and home buyers — think about the number of phone calls, faxes, emails and misunderstandings that can be eliminated!

What's more disruptive than having multiple sources of information?  A well-managed portal provides the same information to everyone (governed by access credentials, of course) — and it's all available 24/7, in real-time, via the cloud!

Portals improve communication and that makes the builder's entire enterprise more efficient and productive — resulting in more profit for both the builder and the vendors.