Lukas Olbrich, CEO & Co-founder at Sablono discusses why accountability is so important for the industry and why technology is key to achieving it…

Greater accountability is the key to creating a safer, more collaborative construction industry. Using the power of digital technology to bring about transformation is at the core of what we stand for within the Digital Construction community. The question is, when it comes to accountability and making our buildings safer, are we truly using digital technology to our advantage?

In this article, I will explore why it’s more important than ever to create accountable ways of working on projects, the current challenges that are holding us back, and what we can do as an industry to move forward.

Accountability in construction – why it’s more important than ever

It’s fair to say that tragedies like the Grenfell tower fire have caused us all to think more deeply about the issue of safety in the industry, and the Building Safety Act 2022 puts practical action behind this sentiment.

As part of this, the Defective Premises Act has extended claims against defective work from 6 years to 15 years, and up to 30 years for claims relating to dwellings completed before the act was passed. In short, whether a main contractor, subcontractor or owner, greater accountability is needed on projects to safeguard into the future.

When it comes to managing a project that involves lots of suppliers how do you govern this? How do you make sure you collect the right information that you can access 30 years later? How do you ensure you have a full audit trail of who has done what and who has signed off each piece of work?

Now more than ever, it’s time for our fragmented industry to work hand in hand and implement proper data flows and governance methods to meet regulatory requirements.

Current barriers to accountability

There are a few issues that are currently holding us back as an industry that we must address to move forward:

1. No one version of the truth
The first issue lies with the absence of a ‘single version of the truth’ on projects. With multiple subcontractors and parties using different methods to document information, it’s easy to see how this could leave room for confusion. Reliance on Excel trackers may provide a ‘digital solution’ away from paperwork, but it fails to provide a connected way of working that ensures that everyone on a project is on the same page. This lack of centralised information results in silos, mismatched data and uncertainty around what is really true.

2. Lack of standardisation
The next issue I want to address is the lack of standardisation on projects. Leaving tasks open to interpretation and implementing different methods across jobs not only increases the chance of incurring errors – but also means that parties are not held to a clear standard of how work should be completed. This can lead to unmet expectations and issues later down the line. Greater accountability requires clearly defined standards.

3. Too little focus on execution
Finally, with all of the different parts of a construction project – from initiation and planning all the way to handover – project execution is perhaps the most neglected, yet this is often where the most issues occur. Little focus on how the thousands of tasks that make up the final project work, means that even the smallest errors can lead to costly and dangerous mistakes. We need to think more strategically about how to work accountability into the project execution phase to ensure the best chances of success.

Digital technology as the solution

It’s clear that our current ways of working may be unhelpful when it comes to gaining peace of mind that projects are fully accountable. Digitisation is surely the key to providing quality information that can be used to keep our buildings safe and our businesses compliant, however, not all digital methods are created equal.

The current trends of progress monitoring through cameras, and robots on-site are helpful to an extent but lack true accountability. In the end, it always goes back to questions like: ‘who delivered the work?’, “were they qualified?”, “did they follow the standards set?”, “who signed off the work?” and “what evidence was captured?”. Only a full audit trail in alignment with the golden thread can provide this information. So what’s the solution?

Amongst all of the digital technology on the market, having access to real-time execution data that can be shared with everyone working on a project, while crucially providing the golden thread of information that can be held digitally is the key. This ensures that the project intent and any project changes are captured, preserved and used to support safety improvements. In fact, this is one of the main reasons why Sablono was created.

Sablono is a construction execution and documenting solution that provides a complete digital audit trail. From the company executing work, QA assessments, the time of sign-off, who signed off, photos and more – Sablono makes it quick and easy to keep track of thousands of activities and retrieve the actual execution data in moments. Plus, this audit trail runs for decades to provide on-demand access to data from previous projects.

Overall, this gives all parties greater accountability and transparency on projects to increase confidence around the Building Safety Act. Learn more about how Sablono can provide you with a digital audit trail here.

Lukas Olbrich, CEO & Co-founder at Sablono