When it comes to progress control, we typically forget the “Buyer” from the “stakeholder equation” (which typically ends with the Project Owner). A Buyer is a purchaser of a house, villa, floor, office, store, etc from the Project Owner (e.g. Property / Real estate firm) and the end customer of a commercial property sale.

In times of uncertainty both parties, the Project Owner and Buyer, are requesting clarity and accurate reports on progress. However, the Buyer typically has different circumstances that I will address in this post and show you a solution we recently implemented. 

The Buyer’s Problem

The Buyer typically relies on the contract and his trust in the Project Owner when it comes to knowing progress. A Buyer may receive periodic updates by phone, email or tour the site once in a while. But typically, Buyers are not construction experts and many times will not be able to visit the construction site.

Another issue is change orders. Buyers will always have change requests that will impact the Project Owner and the Contractor. It could be a request to resize certain rooms, change some material specifications, or even add an extra bathroom. Whatever the change request, many parties in the construction process are impacted and schedules need to change, drawings redone and checked for clashes, cost estimates revised, and all these impacts sent across to different stakeholders including the Buyer.

If the Buyer is required to pay the Project Owner for completed milestones, this visibility becomes a necessity. And with delays we are seeing due to the COVID-19 outbreak, it makes sense to provide this visibility, so the Buyer sees the source of these delays. 

In addition to the above, the Buyer needs to have a constant view of the latest building plans by discipline.  And more importantly, he/she needs to know the expected finish time and progress not just for the whole unit, but also segmented by finishing, floors, rooms, discipline, and even by permits.

How to give the Buyer a better view

Using a cloud-based project control solution like BlackSmithSoft for BIM (with BIM 360), all the operation stakeholders exchange different types of construction critical data: models, revisions, BOQs, schedules, data from the site, cost and budget reports, etc.

If we take some of this data relevant to the Buyer (such as his/her unit model, site data, schedule, budget) we can create a special portal exclusively for each Buyer. And this is what we did with one of our clients. In a project made up of several villa units, a portal was set up for each Buyer. And the process was very simple – only the relevant “Buyer’s unit” data from the high-level project data was selected and reported to the Buyer in a single page webpage (secure of course).

Not only did this boost the Buyer’s visibility and confidence in the Property Company, but it also offered a great way to see impacts of change orders, financial milestone obligations, delays and reasons, etc. It can even be expanded to give the Buyer a workflow to approve things such as materials, room finishes (paint colors, tiles, etc.), catalogs, and change requests.