What We’ve Learned: COVID and the Construction Industry

Maybe, just maybe, this viral string of pandemics is over, at least for this decade. Construction industry businesses continue to do damage control. If you believe everything happens for a reason, one of the key takeaways from this experience is: we learned ways to improve the way we work.

Construction Industry Communications and Data Management

Preventing disputes or resolving them quickly, particularly during and in the aftermath of the pandemic, will likely require many to re-evaluate standard practices. –AIA Contract Documents

Some of the things we learned from the pandemic are:

• Dispute resolution is faster when compromise is on the table. We have already reduced the length of time we averaged in 2019 to settle a dispute, possibly because our communications have improved over the years.
• Effective utilization and management of data can make a huge difference later. If there’s an issue during a project or worse – a later one that may require legal resolution – the company with the best documentation has an edge. If you must sort through numerous emails and spreadsheet updates made by-who-when to validate your decision-making, you lose, one way or another.
• Learn the meanings behind the words in contracts. Misinterpreting or misunderstanding contract clauses is not an excuse for failure to comply with agreements. Some of the construction industry contract phrases with which to familiarize yourself include:
  • Frustration of purpose – Excuses a party from breaching a contract when the contract has lost all value
  • Impossibility/impracticability of purpose – Allows a party to suspend/avoid performance when an event beyond its control makes the performance of the contract no longer capable of being performed
  • Force majeure – Releases from liability because of uncontrollable events (war, weather) that are not the fault of any party but which make it difficult/impossible to fulfill the contract

Every week, we take raw and unfiltered building permit data and sort it for you. We examine building and renovation projects and customize the information for you. With Construction Monitor, you’ve got an entire team of marketing pros available to discuss business development possibilities. Your possibilities. Call 800.925.6085 (International/435.586.1205) or contact Construction Monitor.