THE CIRCLE OF

PRODUCTIVITY
SIMPLE AND PROVEN 3 PART FORMULA
TO INCREASE YOUR CONSTRUCTION SITE
PRODUCTIVITY

WWW.APROPLAN.COM
EDITOR’S NOTE

When we are young, we are taught that the only way to success
is to work hard and reach for more.

There is nothing wrong with that.

The interesting part comes when we are in a position to lead a

company, team or a project.

In order to be more profitable, our psychological default

settings guide us towards bigger projects. But you know that
bigger projects bring bigger risks and bigger responsibilities.

Living in this day and age, gives us the opportunity to “play”

SMART and HARD at the same time.

This is why we’ve created this eBook. To show you how SMART
always has to lead the HARD work.

Having this as our leading premise, we decided to focus like a

laser on the field of construction site productivity.

In the following pages you’ll be able do dive in the annals of the

problem with productivity, learn about the simple and
systematic solution and get prepared for the next steps.

Also, we would like do deliberately invite you to try AproPLAN.

More on that later.

Now, turn off your mobile and web notifications and enjoy the
read that the AproPLAN team prepared for you.

— Thomas Goubau
CEO and Founder, AproPLAN

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

2
 TRY AproPLAN

GET A RELIABLE
PARTNER
The information shared in this eBook
should be tested and refined in your
own environment and team.

Although we are focusing on improving

the construction site productivity, there
are other key areas where you need to
focus on and reach higher profitability.

If you want to execute and improve

those key areas smarter, faster and
easier, then we encourage you to try
AproPLAN today.

With AproPLAN you can:

• Spend up to 75% less time on each

project and job site.

• Increase productivity with accurate

plans, jobsite logs, notes, drawings,
and more.

• Monitor and assign punch lists and

work orders effortlessly.

• Collaborate in real time with all

involved contractors and
subcontractors.

• Stay on budget and improve

efficiency by 50%.

Or visit www.aproplan.com
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART 1: THE PROBLEM 06

What Are The Main Implications 07

The Five Pain Points Caused By The Problem 08

PART 2: THE SOLUTION 10

PILLAR #1: Establish a better documentation

management process 11

PILLAR #2: Establish a better communication

system 13

PILLAR #3: Commit to constant monitoring,

review and improvement 17

The 3 Unbeatable Benefits 19

PART 3: NEXT STEPS 22

ABOUT APROPLAN 23
 PART 1
THE PROBLEM
EXPLORING THE ROOT OF THE
PRODUCTIVITY PROBLEM AND ITS
IMPLICATIONS ON THE GENERAL
WORKFLOW
PART 1: THE PROBLEM
This is the section where we really need to focus and model the
root of the problem.

Also, we are about to explore what are the main consequences

that the problem is causing.

Let’s start with pointing a finger towards the elephant in the

room:

“Approximately 75% of construction failure cases is owed

to human error. The remaining 25% of construction failures
are caused by consciously (intentionally) accepted risks.”

(Source: [Report] Quality Improvement in the Construction Industry: Three Systematic

Approaches by Ilías Ortega and Søren Bisgaard Institute for Technology Management University
of St. Gallen Switzerland)

Now let’s look at the numbers separately. According to the

study in the report, 25% of the mistakes/errors are actually
calculated as a risk upfront. The other 75% are attached to the
role of the human factor.

Now, let’s dig deeper.

According to the same study, 85% of the failures due to human

error could have been avoided by the use of appropriate
management principles and methods. The key inference that
can be drawn from this study is that failure prevention is
primarily a managerial issue and secondarily a technical one.

Also, another study shows that 80% of the communication

and project management technology is at the office, while
80% of work is on-site. You will agree with me that it is time to
change this and turn things upside down.

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

6
Knowing where the problem is actually conceived, lets look at
the real world implications:

1. Field Implications

The findings shared above are interesting and amusing to think

about. But what is more important now is to get crystal clear
how all of that is manifested in the real world.

2. Many Stakeholders

You will agree that sometimes there are too many “players in
the team”. Without proper plan and methodology for
satisfaction and expectancy management the things can easily
go out of control and influence the end result.

3. Miscommunication

One of the biggest implications is the communication part.

Some of the experts even say that this is the No.1 reason why
the productivity of the construction site is suffering.

4. Administrative Errors - Lack of Changes

Management Process

The work at the construction site usually generates large

number of changes that lead to significant number of revisions
of the documents and plans. Without proper framework and
tools, this can lead to increased number of errors.

This ultimately leads to:

• Time-loss

Time is money. You know that. Everybody knows that. But,

somehow, when we are on-site or executing the construction
plan, we waste a lot of time.

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

7
• Delayed Delivery

It is well known that the building sector often has a reputation

for being late with the delivery of the results. This leads to a lot
of other complications that place additional burden to the
communication and the administrative side of the project.

• Unsatisfied Customers

This is a painful one. Since we have to be customer centric with

everything we do, having a low productivity and high error
percentage is directly influencing the satisfaction level of the
customer.

• Unmotivated/Overwhelmed Team

Working in an environment where there are dysfunctional

systems and procedures leads to unsatisfactory performance of
the team members/employees.

• Decreased Profitability

The most painful hit that comes out of not having a high level of
productivity is losing money left and right. We would not go
further into explaining how bad this is on the long term.

Bottom line, we can compare the construction with a living

organism. There are multiple “organs” that need to work on
their own, but also communicate and collaborate with the other
organs. In order to communicate and collaborate, they have to
have procedures, channels, tools and rules.

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

8
 PART 2
THE SOLUTION
INTRODUCING THE THREE PILLARS OF
INCREASED ON-SITE PRODUCTIVITY –
“THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY”
PART 2: THE SOLUTION
By now, we hope that you want to know the answer of the
main, burning question: “How can I lower the percentage of
errors by increasing the on-site productivity?”

If that’s the case, then you are ready for the main part of this
eBook.

When we started brainstorming ideas for the eBook, we wanted

to find the best solution and simplified so you can start
implementing immediately.

Working closely with many clients of ours, we found the three

essential steps/pillars of increased productivity.

The most interesting part here is that everyone of them said that
if you want to increase the productivity, you’ll have to commit to
a constant work. It is a circle.

That is why we called it:

The Circle Of Productivity

PILLAR #1: Establish a better documentation
management process

This pillar is actually the heart of the whole productivity field.

Get this right and you are on the right way to higher profitability
and success.

Looking at it, there are three main pieces: Procedures, People

and Tools.

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

10
A. Procedures

A lot of companies do things successfully, but not

systematically. To be more strategic and engineer your success,
you’ll have to start with the procedures. To do this, follow these
steps:

1. On a blank piece of paper, describe the perfect working day.

If you can imagine an ideal no-error workflow, how would it
look like? Where the documents will be stored locally or
online?

2. Based on your experience, select the crucial activities

related to documentation management.

3. Based on your experience, list the repeating errors and wins

regarding the documentation process

4. Research your competitors. What are their procedures?

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

11
Doing the exercise above, you’ll notice that there are 4 main
activities:

- Creating

Come up with a procedure about creating documents in the

dashboard/working environment you are going to use. Where?
What? Who? When? How? Why?

- Ordering

What will be the order of the documents? Do you need to

prioritize some of them and make them more visible/accessible
for the team?

- Editing

Since this is really important activity, you need to be clear

about: Where? What? Who? When? How? Why?

- Reporting

You need to have clear plan/guidelines about the look,

preparation and delivery of the reports.

B. People

If you recall, 75% of the errors are due to the human factor.
That is why you need to have clear Roles, Rights and
Responsibilities policy. Make it win - win since it is the only way
to have stable and long term success.

C. Tools

We are living in technologically dynamic world. That’s why you

need to carefully test and choose the tools that will support
YOUR procedures. Don’t try to use something popular only
because it’s popular. Test everything.

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

12
To start right away, here are a few programs that you will find
useful: Box, iCloud, Microsoft One drive, Dropbox, Google
Drive.

PILLAR #2: Establish a better communication

system

If the documentation pillar was the “heart”, now we are going to

focus on the “blood system”.

Well, the blood system is consisted of two parts:

- Internal Communication

The operational communication that happens within the team.

Create a procedure that will clearly specify how do you
communicate among yourselves.

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

13
- External Communication

The communication that happens between the team/company

and external suppliers, partners and clients. Like in the internal
communication section above, here you also need a clear
procedure/policy.

How do you establish a better communication system?

There are two core approaches:

Approach #1: Find an already established communication

system and procedures and apply it in your company.

Approach #2: Gather your employees/team members and

create one on your own

After you chose your approach, here are the 6 essential

elements that you need to take care of:

1. Have a shared working environment for the team

This goes beyond the physical premises of your office. We are

talking about having a centralized online hub where your
employees will work everyday even if they are on the field or in
another country.

The main sections here are shared tasks table, shared and
synced calendar, centralized place for resources storage and
management.

2. Commit to a honest, prompt and open communication

culture

The human error is happening due to the different personalities,

needs and perceptions that every team member has.

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

14
When it comes to the synergy that needs to happen among the
stakeholders, we see a lot of companies officialize the culture
and communication values that they want to nurture and use as
a working guidelines.

This doesn’t have to be boring. There are companies like

Zappos that have their core values written on the office walls.

3. Email

Rule of thumb is to keep email to a minimum. In this day and

age, too much email makes communication less effective.

Please don’t CC-tag the whole team in every email and don’t
use IMPORTANT as an email subject in every email.

Train your people about proper and efficient email writing

techniques.

4. Meetings and Minutes

You should have a process of holding daily or weekly meetings

with your project team – even if its only for 5-15 min. Have a
fixed agenda, or plan it in advance so everyone can make it a
routine.

This is an opportunity to communicate the status of the project,

to allow everyone to take responsibility for the sub- goals/
milestones and make them feel valued in the team. Go through
what had been done and what should be done in the next
week.

Triggering sense of belonging and ownership among your team

will clear the “pipes” of the communication channels between
all of you.

Using the modern technology today can lead to “hiding” behind

the mobile or computer screens and cause inertia when it
comes to execution and delivering great results.

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

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Meetings like this will induce higher peer-to-peer ownership and
responsibility.

To make them efficient and effective record what decisions

have been made and what tasks had been taken from the team.
Then use that to track the progress. If you can’t track it, it did
not happen.

Make those minutes visible by sending them or posting them

on a company dashboard. This will add value to the whole thing
and you and your team members will be sensing strong
urgency for taking action and getting things done.

NOTE: Be careful when meetings involve participation of

external partners/clients. Then, the minutes of meeting will be
considered as legal entity and used if certain disputes arise.

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

16
5. Reporting

Make sure that the tools and approach you are going to use
embeds a reporting system that will generate project progress
or status reports once a week to see if your project is on track.
A step further is to automate the reports’ delivery i.e.
automatically inform the main stakeholders of the current
situation, any deviations and how you are planning to bring
things back on track.

6. Tools

Living in the most technologically enhanced day and age, the

online collaboration with your team is highly recommended. We
are pretty sure that you are aware for the power that today’s
software solutions have, when it comes to sharing files, working
environments and remote communication.

AproPLAN is created especially for that purpose. To make your

project communication and collaboration smooth and effortless.

Deploying good communication practice must rely on being

respectful of other people’s time.

Meetings like this will induce higher peer-to-peer ownership and

responsibility.

Involving your team and inviting them to agree on mutual

communication practice and criteria, can make your
achievements memorable and encouraging.

PILLAR #3: Commit to constant monitoring, review

and improvement

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

17
You need a system. If you want to start simple, what you can do
is appoint someone to be responsible for this pillar and report
directly to you.

After you get this out of the way, you need a procedure. The
simplest procedure that we can recommend is:

- Monitor

- Review

- Improve

Let’s start with the first one.

1. Monitoring

If we start sharing complex approach for this part it is most

likely that you are going to leave it for tomorrow.

To avoid that, we are going to share the simplest method for

monitoring.

Pick one or max two productivity indicators and start with that.

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

18
Don’t try to monitor and improve everything at once.

Gather your team and pick the area where you should see the
biggest improvement and monitor that.

2. Review

Have your person or team look at the monitored indicators through

the following lenses:

• What are we doing good and should continue doing

• What should we stop doing

• What should we start doing

Answering these crucial questions will help you take big leaps
towards optimization.

3. Improvement

Based on the findings and answers above, it is time to come up

with a plan for tweaks/changes.

The biggest mistake that companies do is that they go “all in” and
make the changes directly to every department.

You know better.

Test everything. After you see what works, then implement that
change everywhere.

In other words, when you see what works, you should place those
changes in the operational standards.

This pillar should actually leads to the following 3

Unbeatable Benefits:

• Process Standardization
• Document Control
• Cost Control

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

19
• Process Standardisation

Standardising the processes that are underlining the execution

in your construction projects provides a reliable and
predictable workflow and project execution. This presents your
company in a professional manner and contributes to your
brand awareness, employee efficiency and effectiveness.
PLUS….happy clients.

• Document Control

Using Microsoft excel spreadsheets and word processing

documents for your project management documentation is
flawed, because in this manner you don’t have one centralised
hub for project information. Instead, records are often kept on
the project managers’ local hard drives, email clients or
scattered around your company’s network.

Having a hub for data storage, enables better and faster

communication between your employees and subcontractors,
which leads to profitable business decisions.

• Cost Control

Having control over costs in a project is the key to protecting

your profit. With PM software like AproPLAN, you will have
better visibility on the workflow that leads to making more
profitable decisions in the execution.

As you know, almost every change in the plan can lead to

change in the cost/financial plans. If you have a system/tool for
accurately following the changes, you will be in a position to
have a strong cost control.

On the long tail, this means that there will be no surprises for
the clients and your superiors.

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

20
 PART 3
NEXT STEPS
WHAT ARE THE POTENTIAL
DIRECTIONS YOU CAN TAKE NOW
AND WHICH ONE YOU SHOULD
CHOOSE
PART 3: NEXT STEPS
Knowing all of this, you are in front of a virtual crossroad. There
are 3 options/next steps that you can take.

1. Stick with your old/current way of managing

your projects.

Of course, since you came this far, we know that this is not an
option. Please take action towards improving your current
approach.

2. Take what you’ve learned and try to do it

yourself.

This is an option too. Much better than the first one. As we’ve
said, we are sharing this information with you in order to
motivate you to take action and work ON the business instead
of in it for a change.

Going on your own, will lead to bigger risk and wasted energy
and money climbing the learning curve. Advancing through trial
and error is a good thing if you have the money and the other
resources to invest.

3. Try AproPLAN - “battle tested” solution created

with your needs in mind

In the past couple of years we were working on creating a

solution that incorporates what our customers need. We ask
and listen first and then implement.

Instead of using 3 or 5 different tools, now you can have

everything in one place and focus your energy on success.

We are not talking only about dealing with low productivity. We

are talking about a lot of other benefits.

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

22
Would you like to reduce your administrative costs by 50%
while improving the communication and coordination processes
in your company?

Then we want to invite you to try AproPLAN now. The best part:
It’s F.R.E.E!

Click here to get started! ---> http://www.aproplan.com

ABOUT AproPLAN
AproPLAN is a free service designed to make work easier for all
building project stakeholders, from the first drawing to the
project handover.

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

23
AproPLAN offers a single point for communication between
people, allowing all sides to share documents, notes, messages
and tasks easily.

The powerful capabilities available from AproPLAN include the

onsite reception of information via any medium (PC, Mac, iPad
or iPhone).

We succeeded in living up to our high aspirations! AproPLAN

users are able to capture information onsite and communicate
in real time with stakeholders, share plans and documents,
keep track of what is going on.

Headquartered in Brussels, AproPLAN SA was launched in

2012 by Paul de Gheldere, Frédéric Salvé, Jean-Philippe
Cardoso and Thomas Goubau. AproPLAN is a member of the
NETiKA Group.

www.aproplan.com
/AproPLAN
@aproplan
support@aproplan.com

THE CIRCLE OF PRODUCTIVITY

24
 TRY AproPLAN

LOWER YOUR
ADMINISTRATIVE COST
BY 50%
You’ve been reading so far and came to the end
of this eBook.

If you are still skeptical to go for it, we would

like you to “hear” what our clients are saying:

“As a Works Supervisor for the company Franki, I have

to manage the daily work of our building workers and/
or the subcontractors from structural works until the
finishing stage of building projects.

Since I've been using AproPLAN, task management

has become a “child’s play” because these three main
stages are put gathered in one interface.

In addition to task management on site, I also use

AproPLAN to inform the subcontractors about the
problems they have to handle, this helps me to
supervise my building projects.

Thanks to AproPLAN, daily site supervision has been

become easy.
I couldn’t work without it anymore, neither could our
subcontractors nor our building workers who now
receive clear and precise information about the tasks
they have to fulfill.”

Guillaume VANDERHAUWART,

FRANKI

Click Here To Learn More And Try

AproPLAN For FREE

Or visit www.aproplan.com