By Khalid Noor, 2022
Most live in homes where they would like to change something. Perhaps more space or the design isn’t quite exactly to their liking. This is where home remodelling comes in. Home remodelling is a spectrum on one extreme is to completely rebuild your home. This can be quite unreasonable in most cases.
There are many ways one may want to remodel their home, on one hand a complete rebuild of the home and on the other end taking targeting approaches to changing your home step by step such as opening walls, creating extra rooms or extensions to a home, new pathways through the home, change of materials in building the home etc.
Regardless of the way one wants to remodel their home, a home remodelling software can always come in handy. What exactly makes a good software for home remodelling? For starters a home remodelling software will take into account this spectrum of home remodelling in which one may want to make a simple change or do a complete change of their home.
Features such as estimation tools, financial/cost accounting, project management, budgeting, communication between team members, file sharing and file upload through the cloud aka cloud collaboration between team members and technical support for the system are among some of the main aspects of what would make up the best software for home remodeling.
This article will detail each of these aspects in the hopes of illuminating what makes a good software for home remodelling. Not only this but how these aspects can be utilised as different tools that can enable you to streamline and create ways to collaborate and work on a home remodelling project.
The first important area is project management. In any construction project where building is involved whether it’s the construction of a new structure or in this case modifying an existing structure, be it a complete rebuild which would itself be akin to erecting a new building or on the other end a simple targeted approach at changing one aspect of a home such as the kitchen, project management is essential to the success of that project being undertaken.
The objectives to be achieved with the intention to build within a specific amount of time, including time and resource constraints fall under the umbrella of project management. In other words all these objectives must be completed to a certain standard safely within the allotted amount of time and with the available resources. Organising this and ensuring the project on track is what project management aims to do.
Any construction management software must include the ability for an individual to play the role of construction or project manager by granting them access to estimation tools, calendars, workflows, schedule and planning tools, production calendars in order to manage time and scope constraints of the project, hazard and safety protocols, financial/accounting tools as well as secure cloud storage for file transfer and document uploads and an efficient communication platform to enhance team collaboration on the project. These tools themselves are all essential components to a software for home remodelling and will be touched on.
One of the most important aspects of home construction is the safety aspect. Safety is a necessity even in home remodelling. Any construction management software that is up to par will include quality and safety protocols as a part of the software’s features. Quality and safety is an integral part of construction as construction can be full of risks on site. Due to this there must be ways to mitigate damage and minimise the inherent risks of construction as the safety of the builders is paramount.
The quality and safety features in a software for home remodelling should assess potential risks and aim to manage and reduce them on the construction site. Part of the safety component of the software should be its ability to keep track of defects and ensure responsibility is assigned and there is accountability in the project for different people so issues can be readily resolved. It should also track potential issues from previous projects or issues that arise, and give useful data on the probability of these events happening and what can be done to avoid these issues.
Comprehensive reporting on project information should be visualised through graphs and other relevant visual aids that can provide coherent summaries that provide insight into a project. Essentially a reporting tool that can gather data such as measuring the amount of incidents occurring and the types of incidents and making potential hazards obvious for the project manager. All of this helps keep a project on track and ensures defects and issues arising do not derail it.
Following this are estimation tools. A construction management software requires an estimation tool as this is an essential part of the pre-construction phase of a project. During the bid process contractors will submit a bid to the person they are hoping to win the project form. The estimation provides a detailed summary on the costs the builder will expect to expose oneself to throughout the duration of the project and details the expenses for the completion of the intended remodelling process.
A good construction management software will include a useful estimation tool to allow for the builders to properly estimate the costs of the project. It should be designed in such a way that labour, materials and other cost factors of the project that need to be estimated can be properly and effectively streamlined, by creating line-by-line and quantity estimates of materials, utilising pre determined formulas, calculation capabilities and other features in order to achieve this.
As aforementioned, safety is important to help a project not be derailed by issues and hazards. A project being on time in general is extremely important, hence even in home renovation it is of prime importance a construction management or home remodelling software incorporates the ability to create detailed project schedules through workflows.
A workflow is essential to a project detailing step by step what is to be done, and who is to do it, and an online system should enable for the creation of one and the assigning of different team members to different tasks in the detailed workflow.
A workflow will help a project management process through standardisation. It can detail how something is done every time. The best software for home remodelling aids the project manager by standardising the process of completing a project through the completion of different projects by collecting the relevant data so that future projects can become even easier. The standardisation aspect can give ease of mind for the project management to better delegate tasks and allow them more time to work on more important tasks.
Another feature that is important in a home remodelling software is secure cloud storage for documents and files. It should allow team members of the project to share documents with one another and collaboratively work on them. The large amount of documents and paperwork in construction projects such as home remodelling can benefit from having a system that provides the ability to have those files online as it can be painstaking to manage documents with the possibility of losing them.
The building software should allow for team members to collaboratively work together and communicate with each other with ease. An internal messaging system is also important to facilitate this and is a much needed feature and a quality software for home remodelling.
Lastly a home remodelling software should have the ability for you to upload floor plans of the home to be remodelled. This is important as you need a blueprint to work with. Ideally the software can allow for modifications to the floor plan through the software as well.
A good construction software makes use of good project management functionality, estimate and financial/accounting tool functionality, job management, scheduling and planning and support functionalities and more. WunderBuild is a construction management software that aims to provide all of these functionalities and more to bring out the best outcomes for a project.
It is currently offering a free trial, visit here to try WunderBuild for free
