Streamlining Construction Meetings with the Right Technology
Love or hate them, construction meetings are essential for a successful project. The idea behind a good construction meeting is to ensure it’s worth everyone’s time. You can do that by taking accurate construction meeting minutes, inviting all the right stakeholders, and following up in the right ways. If that sounds a little daunting, never fear: there’s also software for that.
Today, we explore why construction meetings are so important and how to set them up for success. We’ll look at how to create an ideal agenda, ace meeting minutes and follow-up action items, and utilize the right software to your advantage.
Ready to make better use of your time and team? Let’s dive in.
Why are construction project meetings important?
Everyone has been to a meeting that could have been an email. In other words, a waste of time. Construction is no exception despite the critical role meetings play to level set on project planning and design, progress, and closeout. In general, construction meetings:
- Help ensure that all stakeholders are informed and aligned on project goals, timelines, and progress
- Provide an opportunity to discuss and address issues before they become more significant problems
- Facilitate collaboration and decision-making among team members and stakeholders
- Help ensure that the project stays on track and within budget
- Provide a platform for risk identification and management
Types of construction meetings
There are several types of construction meetings that happen over the lifecycle of a project. Here are a few common types:
- Preconstruction meeting: A preconstruction meeting kicks off a project where key stakeholders review critical construction documents, meet the project team, and answer lingering questions to get everyone on the same page.
- Owner-Architect-Contractor (OAC) meeting: These are regular meetings typically held by the project manager where the project progress is reviewed with the architect and owner. These often involve site visits to review project progress.
- Site meetings and construction progress meetings: Site meetings are typically weekly between various stakeholders completing work on the jobsite. These meetings help address project issues or blockers and improve communication across the site team.
- Safety briefing and toolbox talks: These meetings help reinforce safety on site. These are preventative conversations to identify and review safety hazards.
Who are the key stakeholders in a construction meeting?
The most pressing question many project leaders, project managers, and site supervisors wonder is who should be included in construction meetings. Of course, the who depends entirely on the type of meeting, stage of the project, and intended agenda to accomplish.
Still, meeting organizers must be careful to invite the right people for awareness. If you leave critical people out, you limit your opportunity to hear from people who matter on important subjects while there’s still time to address their thoughts.
Consider the following stakeholders in your construction meetings, if applicable:
- Stakeholders critical for on site success: The project manager, project leaders, and site managers and supervisors
- Stakeholders ensuring design intent and constructability: Architects, engineers, and subcontractors
- Owners and owner reps: Client representatives and other decision-makers on the client side
- Specialists and external consultants: Specialists and experts who can provide valuable insights or guidance on the project
The traditional construction meeting process
Before we consider what meetings look like with the aid of the right software, let’s take a brief look at what a more traditional construction meeting process is like.
Pre-meeting preparation
Typically, whoever is slated to lead the meeting spends time leading up to it setting objectives, inviting essential participants, and establishing timelines and agendas. It’s their responsibility to make sure expectations are established and communicated for all meetings – whether they are virtual or in person.
If attendees understand the expectations and process for the new meeting style, they’ll be more inclined to engage and adapt to it.
Conducting the meeting
The goals during the meeting include starting on time, staying on subject, encouraging participation, etc. Without a guide, though, meetings are less likely to stay on track and more likely to run over the allotted time.
Taking meeting minutes
Construction meeting minutes are an essential element of the process, as they create a record of what went on. While taking minutes isn’t new, it tends to get out of hand without tools to keep them on track. People start to speak quickly, the agenda gets left behind, and the person taking the minutes gets distracted.
Construction meeting minutes template
If you are looking to improve your construction meeting minutes, check out our free downloadable template:
Post-meeting follow-up
After the meeting, it’s time to assign action items, review outcomes, and decisions, and send follow-up communications to stakeholders and their teams. Typically, this requires a lot of manual labor to get all the post-meeting ducks in a row. For that reason and others, having the right software on hand is best.
How construction software helps make construction meetings more efficient
Today’s tech-forward world calls for the best applications to help keep your meetings on track.
Meeting automation capabilities
The right software allows for easy sharing of project information and updates before the meeting, then streamlines the agenda creation and distribution process.
Yes, you can technically do the same in Word and Excel. However, they make it harder for team members to access and keep track of changes. With more robust meeting minute software, you can standardize your agendas and minutes. You can also attach models, drawings, and other documents to your records.
Tools like Meetings in Autodesk Build increase accessibility to critical information and make it simple to access during the meeting. Agendas and minutes can easily be exported to PDF for distribution and are automatically accessible to meeting invitees. Auto-numbering and follow-up content creation make it easier to stay consistent from the beginning to the end of your project.
Real-time collaboration tools
With the right construction meeting software, you will have the ability to collaborate in real-time. Note-taking has never been easier, allowing you to capture detailed minutes, track accountability, and create paper trails for audits. In Autodesk Build’s Meetings, the software also allows you to centralize and organize your meeting minutes and documents, giving all stakeholders access to the information whenever they like.
Once you’ve made decisions in the meeting, you can create tasks and immediately assign them to the right individuals. That makes it much easier to capture decisions as they occur in real-time while everyone still remembers and agrees on them.
All-in-one meeting functionality
By using software to track your meetings rather than the old-school paper-and-pen method, you’ll never again have to worry about missing information (or deciphering your own chicken scratch). The right software will enable the following:
- Easy tracking and monitoring of action items and progress post-meeting
- Centralized record-keeping of all project-related communications and documentation
- Fewer overall meetings to go over the same material
- Data accessible to anyone from a single platform, obviating the need for complicated file tree searches
- Seamless, well-planned meetings that make the best use of everyone’s time
Best of all, as more project and company documentation and conversations move online, you’ll want to make sure proprietary information stays safe. You should always consult with your IT team on security certifications and implementations and only use software that offers a high degree of security from a trusted expert.
Your best construction meeting is yet to come
All in all, construction meetings are a reality that isn’t going anywhere soon. Because they’re so important, it’s critical you spend time choosing and using the tools that will help you do the best possible job. That means keeping track of information, bringing the right people into the loop, and generally making the most of time spent. The above tips will help you do just that.
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