If you are someone who loves to stay productive and organised, it is high time that you embraced checklists. Simply put, a checklist is a list of different go-throughs that you need to follow in a systematic order to achieve better results. Drawing up checklists is easy. Adhering to it systematically allows you to increase productivity, delegate work easier, organise workflows and ensure safety better. All these factors play a pivotal role in the construction industry. We take a look at how important checklists are in the construction industry and how easy it is to set up a checklist in VisiLean to help you work collaboratively and efficiently.

The number games

However, before we get there, allow us to glance over the numbers so that you can see how important it is to plan construction projects, whatever the scale is. Over the past two decades, construction productivity has grown by only 1% per year, according to a McKinsey & Company report. The report claims there is a huge difference between large-scale and small-scale players. This is now bound to change with digitilisation making inroads in construction industry

A McKinsey report recommends that companies overinvest in planning in order to combat this problem. Companies routinely implement 30 – 60 – 90 day plans but struggle to manage short-term planning in the construction process. Micro-level plans are extremely helpful for ensuring the smooth execution of a project during a short period. And this is where checklists come in. By using checklists, you can ensure that all your bases are covered while detailing your work plans with the team.

Why use checklists in the construction industry?

For construction to stay on schedule and budget, both macro and micro level planning are required. With too many processes, it will be difficult to remember each task that needs to be done. This is where digital checklists come into the picture. Once you have defined what needs to be done, it is time to create efficient checklists for your team. These checklists help your team to achieve:

1) Better Organisation – Checklists provide stakeholders with details that need to be completed before moving on to the next step

2) Efficient Delegation – Checklists clearly define who is responsible for a particular task and this helps the stakeholders to have more clarity in the workflow.

3) Improved Productivity – With a checklist in place, there are minimal chances for errors. This allows the stakeholders to optimise time spent on each task and get more work done without issues.

Checklists on VisiLean

At VisiLean, we believe that checklists are a part of all construction tasks and are deeply embedded within the workflow. To help streamline these processes, VisiLean has now introduced auto-generated checklists that can trigger for certain task properties and actions that suit your execution workflows. Let us take a look at how it works.

How can you create a checklist on VisiLean?

Creating a checklist on VisiLean is a simple and easy process. In addition to bringing the stakeholders on the same page, it also increases collaboration and productivity. And what’s more these can be done from the mobile device! Here’s a look at the steps involved.

1) Define what is to be checked before you begin.

For example, you could be creating a checklist before you start concreting, on say, the fifth floor of the project you are working on. You can set the parameters that need to be taken care of into the checklist. Once these parameters are set, it becomes mandatory to action upon this list before going to the next step in the construction workflow, without disturbing concreting or structural steel workflows at any other location!

2) Determine how often and at what times the list will be used.

You can trigger the checklist on VisiLean at any point in the workflow of the activity. To take the same example of the concreting process again, your checklist for that will only trigger when you’re starting the work, not during its completion or quality approval (since you defined a “start concreting” checklist).

3) Specify the people responsible for checking each task.

While creating the checklist, you can assign a person or a team of people who will have to take the required action to ensure the checklist is followed to the T. If there are any additions or deletions, that is also recorded systematically.

In short, a checklist allows you to streamline the workflow and with VisiLean, it just gives you more freedom to be on the top of the construction game.

Don’t get left behind. Discover how VisiLean can enable your teams to be more efficient. Want to know more? Head to our YouTube channel , or visit our website, to learn about all our features and book a demo with our team!