With construction projects, organization and planning are of the utmost importance. It can also be challenging to coordinate between the field and the office. So, what makes a great construction workflow stand out? Let's take a look at an example of a construction workflow using monday.com that you can use from your mobile device out in the field! 🏗

This guide will walk you through two interconnected boards that you can use to get started, one useful shift management board, and one dashboard. The first board, called "Construction Projects", is a high-level board that collects and tracks all running projects. The second, called "Project Planning", is a low-level board, breaking down the details of a project and its progress. The third board, called "Construction Shifts" is a shift log, connecting the workers out in the field with in-office managers. 🚧

Get to know these boards with us and watch your productivity skyrocket! 📈

Construction Projects

With so many construction projects being so multi-faceted and spanning across a vast timeline, we need to be able to take a look at the big picture. High-level boards, like "Construction Projects", are an excellent way to check up on the status of complicated projects.

Each item on our board is a different project. Our board organizes our projects by groups representing their construction phase ("Initiation" and "Planning" all the way to "Close-out"). Information about the projects is filled into the various columns across the board.

Let's take a look at some of the columns we've used to create this board:

Item Name Column (first column on your board) - records the name of the project
People Column - allows us to assign the project manager responsible for each project
Status Column - to record the stage of each project within each construction phase
Rating Column - to record the overall QA/QC Test score
Timeline Column - to track the total lifetime of each project
Location Column - links the project's address
Numbers Columns - to record the total budget, and to track the total budget spent
Formula Columns - to calculate whether each project is within or over budget, and to calculate how much we are over or under budget
Date Column - to mark the date and time of the next upcoming "Status Meeting" for each project

Keep track of upcoming meetings

Whether you're on the go or in the office, never let important dates and milestones slip by! Stay on top of upcoming "Status Update" meetings using your mobile Calendar View!

From your Calendar View, you can view all of the meetings scheduled for this month, color-coded according to the project phase (group)! Just tap on one of the events to open up the item's card below to see all of the important details!

Project Planning

Now that we know what's going on at a management level, we can drill down a little closer to the day to day activities out in the filed! Our "Project Planning" board helps us to successfully manage the details of our construction projects by tracking our progress, deadlines and more! 🔧 🔨

Each project has its own low-level "Project Planning" board so that we can keep our team focused on where their focus is needed! We're going to check out the Project Planning board for our Thornhill Court Project. Each group on this board represents a project phase, and each item is a stage within the phases. We can then use our columns to keep our project's status detailed and up to date!

Let's take a look at some of the columns we have in this board:

People Columns - allow us to assign the phase manager and the contractor responsible for each stage
Status Column - to mark the approval status of each phase
Timeline Column - to track the dates this stage will take place within
Dropdown Column - to select which permits must be filed at each stage
File Column - to upload the permits received at this stage
Rating Column - to record the QA/QC Test score
File Column - to upload the QA/QC Report
File Column - to upload any images photographed right from the field
File Column - to upload the building plans (DWG or PDF) for this stage to be accessed at any time and any place
Numbers Columns - to record the total budget, and to track the total budget spent
Formula Columns - to calculate how much we are over or under budget

As our construction team advances through the different phases of the project, they change the statuses of each phase to represent their progress. Seeing the timeline beside each stage helps our team stay focused and stick to our goals. Using this board to update exactly where our team stands in the construction of each project promotes transparency and communication within our team while ensuring that managers always know where things stand.

Update your project on the go

You've been out in the field for hours and want to take a few minutes to update the project's status and check on tomorrow's tasks before calling it a day. No need to head over to the office or lug around a laptop - just pull out your mobile device!

We know how challenging it can be to keep the field workers and the employees back in the office in tune. So we use this board to collaborate from wherever our team members are! We use our "On-site Uploads" column to add photos taken from the field from our mobile devices so that everyone can see the great progress being made!

Check on your progress

Since we're on the go and often use our mobile devices to update and check on the progress of our project, we can use the Battery View, which is unique to the mobile app! The Battery View gives us a battery-style chart displaying the distribution of our Status labels across all of the items in our board. In this board, it shows us which stages are currently in progress, which have been approved, which are finished completely, and how many more we still have to tackle!

Construction Shifts

Our third board helps us manage our shifts and the hours we've worked! Every month, shift managers can fill in the People Column with the field workers for each project and for each day of the week. 👷‍♂️ 👷‍♀️

To sign in, workers just need to click the play icon in the Tracking Column beside their shift to start the clock exactly when they began to work! When they are finished for the day, they can quickly log off by clicking the pause icon to stop the clock!

Note: If anyone ever forgets to start the shift timer, or makes a mistake on one of their shifts, they can edit the time tracked manually from their browser!

Every construction company has to overcome the issues leading to a workflow breakdown between their office and field. To prevent any of these issues when it comes to payroll, we use this board rather than time cards or paper field notes to prevent scanning or manually reentering all of the shift information back at the office!

When it comes time to complete payroll, the responsible party can click the Time Tracking Column for each shift to view a list of all hours per worker! This list can even be exported to Excel with the click of a button! No more inconsistencies and no paperwork that gets lost between the field and the office!

High-Level Dashboard

To make sure that we are reaching our goals and sticking to our KPIs, we've created a high-level dashboard connected to our construction workflow boards! Our dashboard is equipped with several widgets that help us monitor our metrics and important dates.🎯 View your dashboard from your browser or mobile app! Let's take a look at a few of these widgets:

The Chart Widget generates charts based on the data in our boards. This chart shows us the breakdown of all of our projects, according to what phase they are currently in. This helps us understand where we stand across all of our projects in one glance!
The Numbers Widget helps us to add up the total budget from all of our projects, and compare this number to the total "Budget Spent" in a second Numbers Widget. These widgets help us determine whether our budget is on track.
A third Numbers Widget averages the "Quality Score" across our projects, measuring our achievement of quality KPIs.

The Calendar Widget helps us track upcoming Status Update Meetings
The Time Tracking Widget shows us a list of all of our team members' shift times tracked so we know how our resources are being spent! We can set thresholds for our employees so that we make sure nobody is being overworked.
The Timeline Widget shows us the time span of our projects in a comprehensive calendar. The items are color-coded corresponding to the boards they belong in, so we know where to go for more details! We can use this widget to determine whether the project goals and schedules are met.

The Board to Globe App lets you map out your projects on an interactive globe! It's connected to the Location Column, and helps you to plan out delivery routes, shifts, and other important logistics from your desktop or right from your mobile device!

Keep your goals and KPIs close no matter where you are. Check out your Construction Dashboard from your mobile device to check on your projects from the field!

Tip: Make sure to check out our Dashboards Center to take a look at all of the available apps and widgets!

Get creative

These three boards are intended to be a starting point to help you translate your workflow into a monday.com mobile workflow! You can use these exact boards in your workflow if they're right for you, but don't be afraid to experiment and test out all of the amazing features on monday.com! Make sure to check out other prepared templates and explore the Columns Center to see all of the ways you can use columns as building blocks to customize your own one-of-a-kind on-the-go board! You can make your own automations and enable integrations in your browser to really connect the dots in your workflow!

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to our Customer Success Team 24/7! We're happy to help :)

monday.com Mobile App for Construction