by Shane Henson — July 8, 2011—London-based SmartBuilder Software Ltd recently announced the launch of SmartBuilder1, a Web-based mobile software system for the U.K. construction market.
SmartBuilder1 is designed to help construction companies deal with some of their greatest on-site challenges: keeping projects on track and delivering them on time, ensuring high quality, helping project teams become more efficient, achieving timely communication of issues on-site and tracking everything that happens in the field. The software works on Android smartphones and tablets.
The software allows managers on-site to update progress in real time, to record reasons for delays, and to communicate with people while in the field about issues. The system can be used to identify and tackle problems on-site at the earliest opportunity and to action others to solve them faster than before. This is especially valuable for managers who need to communicate detailed information immediately with sub-contractors, clients and their teams, stress SmartBuilder1’s designers.
Users can also perform quality inspections much more efficiently. Instead of taking out drawings, markers, clipboards, notebooks and digital cameras, users can tick issues off the touch screen, image the problem, mark-up the drawings electronically on screen, and communicate this to those who need to fix the defects. Smartbuilder1 also provides an audit trail of everything that happens on-site, which is then stored securely in “the cloud.”
