The Ultimate Guide

to Benchmarking
Construction Workflows
 The Ultimate Guide to Benchmarking Construction Workflows

Table of Contents
3 Introduction

4 The Power of a Digital Construction Strategy

5 What’s the Purpose of Benchmarking Construction Workflows?

7 Where to Focus Your Digital Construction Strategy and Benchmarking Efforts

Requests for Information (RFIs)
Change Orders
Construction Documents
Scheduling
Inspections and Safety Issues
Closeout Processes
Labor Productivity
What Other KPIs Should You Track?

11 Know Where You Stand

2
Introduction
Building a skilled team of construction professionals simply isn’t enough to stay
competitive in today’s market. The world’s best construction firms spend a lot of time
benchmarking and adjusting their workflows.

Why do workflows matter so much in construction? Much like in manufacturing, small

errors and delays made during a complex building process add up quickly. Construction
teams need to measure and quantify their workflows so small problems don’t escalate
into significant schedule delays and cost overruns. But how should a team go about the
benchmarking process?

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 The Ultimate Guide to Benchmarking Construction Workflows

The Power of a Digital

Construction Strategy
Digital strategy can no longer be Many companies are overwhelmed
a subset of the broader business by their options, busy with ongoing
vision of a construction firm—it projects that leave little time for
needs to remain front and center internal upgrades, and unsure
of every major company initiative. of where to begin. The extensive
Construction companies may have siloing of data in the construction
historically lagged behind other industry doesn’t help. Conflicting
industries in the implementation of file formats, software packages that
digital strategies, but it’s time they don’t integrate, and user errors can
catch up. scare off construction teams trying to
implement unfamiliar solutions. The
For construction, the benefits of best way to see where to focus first
implementing a winning digital when implementing a digital strategy
strategy are clear. McKinsey reports is to assess the company’s current
that digital transformation1 in workflows. Workflow evaluation might
construction could result in2 cost reveal communication problems
reductions of 4–6% and productivity in one firm and supplier issues in
gains of 14–15%. With such benefits, another. From this information, the
it’s a wonder so few engineering and company can create custom strategy
construction firms have embraced solutions that are both easy to
digital construction tools so far. A implement and create noticeable
study from EY Global3 found that, results from the start.
as of 2017, only a quarter of the
companies surveyed reported having
clear digital strategies.

4
What’s the Purpose of
Benchmarking Construction
Workflows?
If you’re not used to the idea of in under par, you know you’re doing work. This won’t be accomplished
tracking performance metrics as well on a course. If your KPI for labor simply by asking them to fill out
part of running your construction on a particular part of a building is forms or report their own work. You’ll
business, you might think it sounds healthy, you’re doing as well or better need a complete digital strategy
like a lot of extra work. However, than the competition. Of course, this solution that integrates benchmarking
it’s the only way to truly know means you’ll need data from other opportunities. By digitizing the
how well your business is doing sources to compare your internal communication and planning part of
in comparison to the competition. measurements against. the workflow, you’ll immediately gain
Raw data like sales figures don’t most of the information you’ll need
tell you very much because it’s not Many construction companies first for competitive benchmarking.
weighed against other factors like attempt to strategize their workflow
costs, labor, and even customer by using internal benchmarking by
satisfaction. Benchmarking attempts itself. Competitive benchmarking
to quantify important data about is the process of seeing how you
the workflow, including how long a stack up against other companies
worker spends on a task, in order performing the same work. It
to form key performance indicators can only work if you’re gathering
(KPIs). KPIs are a lot like your score plenty of accurate data about your
during a golf game. If you get the ball construction team and how they

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 The Ultimate Guide to Benchmarking Construction Workflows

But how can you decide if a task It’s all about using the information
should optimally take 5, 10, or 20 your digital construction tools are
minutes if there’s no external data to generating for project management
compare against? You might decide and benchmarking. Information on
that 10 minutes is optimal while the past projects allows contractors to
competition does the same task in actually see how they performed,
just 3. With the cumulative nature of beyond the typical success metrics of
construction, these little factors all margin, safety, and client satisfaction.
add up to the final numbers of delay This helps contractors answer the
or lost profit on the project. question “how and where do we
improve?” It could be as simple as
Once you have the data gathered by trying a new tool, standardizing a
benchmarking, you can leverage the practice, or changing to a closer
power of artificial intelligence (AI) to supplier. The companies that embrace
go even further. Turn project data into these opportunities for streamlining
actionable intelligence to identify, will not only benefit personally, but
quantify, and mitigate risk. Automated blaze a trail forward in the industry.
machine learning and AI algorithms
analyze critical project data and
identify important trends and risk
factors—highlighting them before
they become more costly problems
as the project progresses toward
construction. Products like Autodesk
Construction CloudTM empower teams
to predict, prevent, and manage risk
with data as the backbone.

6
Where to Focus Your Digital
Construction Strategy and
Benchmarking Efforts
Of course, the average large construction firm could come up with hundreds of different
potential KPIs to measure and track. Yet spending time on largely meaningless statistics will
only make it harder to notice the numbers that do count. A joint research report created by
Autodesk and Dodge Data and Analytics revealed seven distinct KPIs4 that construction and
engineering firms agree are most important for benchmarking:

Requests for Information (RFIs) just by allowing team members

RFIs are an essential communication to access accurate information on
tool for the entire construction team their own. Since every RFI needs
and anyone else involved, but too to be reviewed and answered in
many of them create delays or halt some way, eliminating even a small
progress altogether. Many RFIs can percentage of them saves time. Even
be eliminated simply by improving if the number of RFIs stays the same,
workflows and communication implementing the right technology to
methods. By breaking down silos streamline the RFI process can reduce
and redistributing access to project delays and unnecessary costs.5
data, you can eliminate many RFIs

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 The Ultimate Guide to Benchmarking Construction Workflows

Change Orders how often errors are caught and scheduling can take hours each
It’s common for an RFI to turn into how long it takes to proliferate an week, especially if managers have
a potential change order, and seeing updated document to keep track of to coordinate the work of dozens
how well the change order process this KPI. Finally, include tracking of of different departments and
is managed is another essential KPI document storage and destruction to subcontractors. Using software that
to track. Construction companies ensure no sensitive information is at supports both the scheduling process
of all sizes and specialties should risk of theft or loss. and connects it directly to up-to-date
track this metric in some way. Poorly project data makes more efficient use
managed change orders can lead to Scheduling of valuable management labor.
rework and customer dissatisfaction. Scheduling isn’t a process that
Teams can utilize a construction happens once at the beginning of a Inspections and Safety Issues
management platform with cost construction project. For effective Safety issues on a construction
management capabilities to improve and efficient labor management, cash project don’t only impact workers
change order tracking across the flow projections, material orders and on the job site, but can also
entire approval process and view delivery, and much more, it’s essential impact anyone on the surrounding
details of cost item impacts as well to update the project’s schedule properties. Issues can arise years
as historical reference points. regularly and each time a major down the road after the project is
change is made. Don’t forget about completed, yet the construction
Construction Documents the impact of a scheduling conflict or firm will still be held responsible
A single construction project can slippage on the project’s budget. for negligent work. Benchmark your
generate hundreds of individual company’s handling of inspections
documents between the various Data is essential for proper and safety issues to ensure you’re not
RFIs, change orders, plans, drawings, scheduling, along with seamless putting the entire company at risk.
inspection notes, comments, and communication systems that When it comes to utilizing software
more. Keeping track of all these connect core team members with to manage safety and/or inspections,
documents is often as much work as subcontractors. Without the right more than half (53%) of general
the actual construction of physical data, you won’t be able to reflect contractors report using it on at least
materials. Lost and outdated upon the progress of a project or half of their projects. If you’re in the
documents slow the construction compare it against the remaining half that aren’t using software for this
process and result in waste and work that needs to be completed. purpose, it’s time to get started.
rework. Benchmarking efforts should Unfortunately, 47% of construction
measure both how well documents managers are still using manual
are managed and what’s done to systems for data collection according
minimize excessive paperwork. Track to a report from TrackVia. Manual

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Closeout Processes Labor Productivity What Other KPIs Should You Track?
Closeout and handover is one of This is the single KPI construction Add additional KPIs as you identify
the most challenging parts of the companies tend to focus on the them as important to your team. Other
construction process. Without proper most, and for good reason. However, common ideas include:
documentation of the design and focusing just on measuring
systems of the structure, it’s much productivity without investigating • Quality control, including the number of
harder to hand over ownership to the any of the other KPIs that affect mistakes made on each project and the
final tenant or manager. Punch lists it will only give you a partial idea resulting impact on the project budget and
help finish out the details for higher of what to fix.6 Labor productivity schedule
customer satisfaction and less time should be tracked in combination • Total customer satisfaction with the
lost in the final stretch of a project. with the many factors that cause lost project, which is often included with
Yet trying to track these fine details efficiency. Dividing data on workers closeout KPI tracking
and small jobs by hand is a major calling in sick from lost productivity
• Cost estimates versus actual costs,
challenge. Construction software not due to training requirements or
allowing you to pinpoint forecasting and
only makes it easier to manage myriad worksite injuries will give insight
supply pricing errors that can eat away at
punch lists, but it also allows you into exactly what’s holding the team
the total profit per project
to track the KPIs of this part of the back. Labor productivity issues are
project. Don’t fall behind at closeout. often tied into complex RFIs or • Daily, weekly, and quarterly completion
hard-to-handle change orders, so rates on projects, determining the total
link these two KPIs when possible scale of work completed per period
to see how they’re affecting each • Profit margins on various types of projects,
other. Identifying the performance of helping your firm focus on certain sectors
different team members also helps that are a better fit than others.
identify weak points in the group that
should be addressed. Using software like Autodesk
Construction Cloud will help you
better track your KPIs to optimize
your construction workflows. Instead
of adding more manual work to your
routine just to track data, choose
software that centralizes your data
to make benchmarking possible. With
Autodesk, you can keep control of
your data and make full use of it.

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 The Ultimate Guide to Benchmarking Construction Workflows

Know Where You Stand

Before you begin creating your new digital construction strategy, it’s vital to
understand where your company currently stands. Luckily, there’s an easy way
to check with a free tool from Autodesk.

The tool includes a 15-minute assessment that helps construction businesses

benchmark themselves against other companies when it comes to the KPIs that
matter most. With this assessment, you will get a personalized report that shows
how your team stacks up against others in the industry.

TAKE ASSESSMENT

10
References
[1] Technology, People, and Process: 3 Pillars of Construction Digital Transformation
Stephanie Ho, Autodesk, November 18, 2019

[2] Reinventing Construction through a Productivity Revolution

McKinsey & Company, February 27, 2017

[3] How Are Engineering and Construction Companies Adapting Digital to their Businesses?
EY

[4] Optimize Your KPIs with Construction Software

Autodesk, November 4, 2019

[5] Digital Strategy Playbook: Construction RFIs

Kristen Sylva, Autodesk, January 13, 2020

[6] Digital Strategy Playbook: Construction Productivity

Kristen Sylva, Autodesk, February 10, 2020

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 The Ultimate Guide to Benchmarking Construction Workflows

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12
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