Quantum Executive Director, Steven Beaumont, looks at different sectors in the construction industry and discusses how we can all relate to the problems they face more than you might think.
Mobile phones, or cell phones, or hand phones, depending on where you are from in the world, are quite frankly, a necessary and useful tool. They bring communication between friends, colleagues and businesses to a point where we are all contactable – provided we haven’t turned the device off to stop people contacting us! But have you ever thought how useful different mobile phone features could be on a construction project?
I must now ask a question at this point; how many of you use a mobile phone to both make and receive calls before using the traditional land line? For me the mobile phone is first. Why? Well because it’s easy and I know people by name and not by a number, and personally I prefer to associate people with a name and not a number.
You will recall in the last article I wrote about the birth of the road and the car and reflected on how these have evolved to today’s standards. With telecoms we have a similar story and put simply, we began with a telephone then we had something called telex, which developed into a fax, then the mobile phone and email arrived at similar times. A self-evolving development of telecoms meaning that faxes are largely a thing of the past and the land line is slowly being taken over by a mobile phone.
But, for this level of communication to continue to develop we do need investment and infrastructure to carry the communication apparatus, cables and equipment and this is one area where construction and telecoms are linked but how?
“How many of you use a mobile phone to both make and receive calls before using the traditional land line?”
Well, I am going to ask you to cast your mind back over say 10 or 15 years now, how many holes did you see in the pavement, or walkway depending where you are from, and these holes were just that, protected with some tape and poles and the contractor confidently thought these would stop me, or you, falling in (but the poles and tape didn’t). This was how telecom contractors and other utility providers operated; one team would dig the hole, another team would come along sometime later to do some work in the hole, then another team would come along usually a generation or so later to empty the hole of old newspapers, crisp packets and the odd dead pigeon so they could fill in the hole and restore the pavement to its former status.
For me this was not how construction or maintenance of telecoms should have been managed and I don’t think lessons have been learned – in some countries anyway.
I want to quickly refer back to the whole concept of telecoms and we must not ignore satellites, I love these, there is something special about how they keep the work communicating with considerable ease. Satellites I suppose are the epitome of advancement as too are mobile phones and their current evolution. So as telecoms advance, how will this impact construction?
Let‘s face it, cables in the ground are always required and infrastructure projects to install these will always be required but for the purposes of advancement in telecoms, and to compare to construction, maybe I should consider satellites and mobile phones and not holes in the ground?
You may have been expecting me to discuss disputes, arbitration or some other method to deal with construction problems in this article, but I am not going to. The thing is, my mobile phone has many, many functions for which I haven’t got a clue what it’s for or what it does. But there are some functions which can be used to greatly assist a contractor who is involved in many projects. He can use the camera to take pictures, video a problem, record a meeting or conversation, write a quick memo about an issue, he can even send an email – effectively with a small pocket size device he can use the mobile phone to not only make calls, but to also make project records.
You will remember in past articles we have discussed records being the most important tool on a project, and the irony is that a sector of the construction industry has evolved so much that a product of this sector is the latest mobile phone which can also double up as a tool to take records on construction projects. And, everyone owns a mobile phone!
I see many contractors with these devices, like me, with a mobile phone in their pocket. But wouldn’t it save lots of time if this phone was used as part of the overall records development process as well?
Isn’t this a long way from a hole in the ground? A lot of holes are still needed to lay the cables but I say use the mobile phone to record the progress!
“Effectively with a small pocket size device you can use the mobile phone to not only make calls, but to also make project records”
Steven Beaumont, Executive Director
Steven Beaumont, a Quantum Executive Director, is a member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. Steven has over 20 years of experience in both local and international construction project disputes and regularly delivers construction claims classes and lectures to industry professionals throughout the GCC. QGS is acknowledged as one of the leading management consultancies dedicated to serving the interests of national and international construction and engineering organisations.
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This article was previously published in the August 2015 edition of Business@Qatar Magazine published by the Gulf Times Newspaper