Perhaps the oldest cliche in the business world is that time is money. But the reason that phrase has become so ubiquitous is because it’s true. And no where is it more true than in the world of construction.
Between paying your design team, securing your contractors, purchasing materials, and paying for the actual labor among other costs, every chance you have to trim time from your processes can be invaluable to keeping your project on-time and within your budget.
This is where construction eSignature software can make a huge difference. By trimming down the wait time on signatures throughout the course of a construction project, eSignatures can, bit by bit, save a firm a great deal of money.
What many people don’t realize is that electronic signature applications are more than just a means through which people can sign on a digital line. From saving document formats to recognizing and converting signature fields on PDFs, eSignature technology can streamline your processes far more than you may expect.
So if you haven’t adopted an eSignature platform yet or if you aren’t getting the most out of your eSignature software, what should you do?
Every industry deals with deadlines and contracts, so why is a construction eSignature solution especially important? The fact of the matter is that the construction industry relies on a unique structure compared to other industries.
Instead of annual contracts with business partners or something similar, most construction work is contracted on a job-by-job basis. A firm will write up a prime contract to bring a general contractor in for one project, but hire someone else for another. And those jobs may be happening concurrently.
When factoring in the business processes involved in adjusting plans, changing deadlines, tracking commitments, approving budgets, hiring subcontractors, and on and on, each construction project requires a mountain of paperwork to track that project’s progress.
Storing and organizing that paperwork takes a great deal of effort and physical space. One lost page can throw off an audit completely. Plus, the cost to print all those contracts and tracking forms adds up over time, not to mention the fact that one ill-timed coffee spill can ruin any important document.
Transitioning to e-signing helps mitigate these risks. Digital paperwork can be stored securely in a decentralized cloud. That means that you won’t have to worry about all of your contracts and tracking materials getting destroyed by a natural disaster or by a clumsy office worker.
Having access to contracts, invoices, and requisitioning paperwork and so forth in the cloud also means that important information is just as accessible from the jobsite as it is from the home office. That means your team can pull up the information they need and get documents signed as soon as it becomes apparent that a change in plan is necessary.
Construction is an industry that is, by necessity, decentralized. Much of the business and administrative work is done independently of the jobsite. The boots on the ground are contracted and subcontracted and there is a lot of paperwork that needs to be tracked and stored.
By embracing digital construction contracts, that paperwork can be done faster, accessed easier, and stored more securely than paper-and-ink.
We’ve looked at why the construction industry in particular can benefit from the use of eSignature technology, but by digging a bit deeper, we can get a clearer picture of how those benefits manifest themselves.
The first benefit is the simplest to explain — utilizing eSignature in the construction industry for contracts saves time. There is no waiting for couriers to deliver paperwork between parties or waiting on a fax or scanned image to be sent through.
The document that needs to be signed can be sent directly to the relevant party and signed without the need to print, scan, fax, or physically mail anything. As soon as the contract is signed, a notification is sent and work can progress.
Construction eSignature applications also bring the benefit of fraud protection. Each document has a digital trail showing a chain of possession, meaning that you can follow the thread of who has sent and received the relevant documents via email or access through an internal system.
On top of that, using best practices for identity confirmation will allow for multi-factor verification of the signatory’s identity. That ensures the legality of the signature and still saves time over paper-and-ink.
Another of the benefits of digital signatures is the security and encryption that comes with cloud storage. Instead of manually organizing and collating copy after copy of important documents to put in a locked filing cabinet, you can make the most of modern tech.
Dropbox Sign, for example, is built to store contract templates as well as integrate with a company’s technology stack to facilitate the automatic storage of signed contracts in organized, easily searchable, secure content management systems.
Changes to plans tend to require document signing in construction because every project has so many factors to it — zoning laws, safety requirements, budget constrictions, and more. Being able to pull up the necessary form to get permissions for changes to submittals from the jobsite and get them signed within moments means your team won’t have to deal with long stoppages in work while waiting on management to confirm the new course of action.
In order to make construction eSignature technology work for you, you need to be aware of the different software and applications with which you will need to interface. That means that you need to take stock of the size of your organization.
Obviously, not every construction firm is the same size, so each company has different needs from an enterprise content and document management standpoint. For some companies, a large platform that allows hundreds of people to log on to perform work is needed, and other companies only require licenses for dozens of people or less.
No matter what size a business is though, they deserve to have the best possible solutions for their budget and needs. Although many come to electronic construction sign technology for similar reasons, the solutions for each firm can differ.
That’s why Dropbox Sign (formerly HelloSign) offers different subscription tiers. Depending on the number of users, the number of programs and applications that need to be tied into your eSignature solution, and the number of customized templates you need to store for quick use, Dropbox Sign can accommodate you.
Dropbox Sign for construction allows your teams to pull up frequently used templates, fill in the relevant fields, get signatures, and store those documents in a secure, searchable database quickly and easily—whether from an office or from a jobsite or anywhere else.
We’ve looked at some of the general benefits of electronic signatures in the construction industry, but what do those benefits look like in a practical setting? To answer that question, we need to look at how to use eSignature in construction management.
We can begin by looking at contracts. Any construction company deals with a lot of contracts. But many of those contracts use the same templates. The specifics of the contract can differ from job to job, but the framework of the contracts for similar functions don’t change.
Say your company is hiring contractors for two different construction projects. The framework of each contract will be the same. The same legal protections and basic language won’t change, but the specifics for each project will.
By having software that can store templates and autofill key information fields as well as highlight all required signature and initial fields for the signee, the process of creating your contracts and getting them signed takes a fraction of the time that a fully manual process would require.
Additionally, construction eSignature solutions can help your contractors and subcontractors deal with issues from the jobsite nearly as soon as they arise.
If they have underestimated their required materials for a job and need to requisition the budget space to purchase more materials, your team can pull up the relevant form from the jobsite, send it in for a signature, and get back to work with minimal downtime.
This expedited process of getting signatures to authorize required adjustments to plans is perhaps the biggest way in which utilizing eSignature technology makes construction management and workflows more efficient. It drastically cuts down on the time a crew is standing around waiting to work because a change in plans needs to be approved or for RFIs to be fulfilled.
Construction eSignature software also ensures clear audit trails. You will know when a contract has been viewed and what changes were made. This ensures transparency and compliance with regulations.
Using eSignatures also helps protect your documents. Physical copies can be damaged or destroyed by everything from a natural disaster to a spilled cup of coffee. Digital documents and contracts are kept securely in the cloud, which protects from physical damage and prying eyes that should not have access to confidential information.
eSignatures also provide benefits when the time comes to run inspections. Your field team can go over a thorough checklist and sign off on their inspections on the spot. The sooner your important inspections are resolved, the sooner you can move on to the next project.
Despite all the benefits of construction eSignature solutions, some people still have concerns about them. That is understandable. When paper-and-ink contracts have been the norm for so long, some people can be a little nervous about making a change.
This typically manifests in concerns about the legality and enforceability of contracts that have been signed electronically.
Fortunately, digital signatures have been around long enough that there is a strong legal framework around them. In fact, you could make the argument that it is easier to confirm the accuracy of an electronic signature than a written one.
This is because eSignatures can show who received a contract and can use multiple points of confirmation to prove the identity of the signatory. That limits the risk of a forged signature or a contract getting lost in transit.
The correspondence between contracted parties is trackable with an electronic chain of possession of all documents. This includes change orders, submittals, RFIs, invoices, and more.
Legislation in the United States surrounding eSignatures and their legality has been around in one form or another since 1999. Those laws have been updated and strengthened in the interim to create a robust legal framework to protect the parties involved in a digital contract. This also includes the ability to get a contract digitally notarized.
The fact of the matter is that there is approximately 25 years' worth of legal precedent to ensure protection for the parties involved in contracts that are signed electronically, so concerns about the legality of eSignatures can be set aside.
The process of creating a building takes a lot of people, a lot of time, and a lot of paperwork. Relying on pen-and-ink contracts slows down everything. It reduces the efficiency that modern technology allows.
Using an eSignature solution means that planning meetings and progress checks can be completed remotely with relevant paperwork sent to the key parties electronically and signed without interrupting the progress of work on the job site.
By embracing construction eSignature solutions, a company is able to trim down the wait times that arise from sending out contracts to getting them back with relevant signatures. That’s just one of the many benefits of making the switch to eSignatures.
You also get improved security and protection of your important contracts from both prying eyes and physical risks. Additionally, your teams can get approvals signed quickly. The request can be sent from the jobsite and signed from wherever the signatory may be at the moment. That means that wait times are reduced, as is the risk of delays that may affect the completion date of a building project.
With Dropbox Sign, you can get the highest quality eSignature technology paired with the digital storage capabilities that Dropbox is famous for. You will also get a piece of software that will integrate seamlessly with your document management system and with your technology stack as a whole.
A high quality construction eSignature platform like Dropbox Sign can improve the business operations of your company exponentially, no matter the size of your firm.
If you have yet to decide on your eSignature solution or you want to improve your digital contract capabilities, reach out to us at TEAM IM. We can help you find the solution that fits best for you.
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