Construction software specialist Barry Dell was on the RedSky stand at November’s Digital Construction Week (DCW) event. Here he provides a round-up of his two days at ExCeL London.
It felt great to be able to be ‘out and about’ at a construction event again, after working from home for so long. It provided a welcome opportunity to meet potential customers and chat with other digital construction professionals.
Productive conversations
DCW was quieter than usual this year, presumably in the wake of the pandemic and because of the complications currently associated with international travel. But strangely enough, the reduced footfall seemed to work in most people’s favour.
There were fewer queues at the stands, for starters. And I was able to have longer conversations with individual visitors. I also felt that people hadn’t come to the event intending to ‘browse’. Instead, they’d done their research and prepared a list of the companies they wanted to talk to and the questions they wanted to ask.
Again, this was advantageous all round and meant that the conversations at the stand were more productive. Over the next few months, I’ll be meeting up again with many of the people I spoke to, so we can continue our discussion.
Learning opportunities
I also delivered a talk about RedSky Project Connect, our collaborative document management solution. Attendees were keen to find out how it can help project leaders save time, drive down risk, improve their environmental footprint (including by dramatically reducing their reliance on paper documents) and gain huge efficiencies.
The event provided many additional learning opportunities for visitors and exhibitors alike. Three sessions really resonated with me – probably because they tied in so well with our RedSky offering. The first was about the importance of construction to human civilisation – nobody could argue with that, of course.
The second focused on the efficiency, productivity and environmental improvements that can result from investing in information management. It was good to hear the presenter reinforcing many of the points I had made in my session about RedSky’s document management solution.
The third session centred on the importance of collecting ‘golden thread‘ building performance information, which is likely to become law in 2023. To meet health and safety standards, construction organisations will need to be able to produce key documents promptly. They will also have to prove that effective and proportionate measures are in place to manage risk and keep residents safe.
Failure to meet the required standards may mean that a building cannot be occupied. Hearing that again brought home to me how transformational it can be for construction companies to implement a reliable document management solution. It’s a sure-fire way to make sure that all relevant documents are safely stored and can be accessed easily, quickly and securely at any time and from anywhere.
Looking ahead to DCW 2022
All in all, DCW 2021 was a highly informative event that sparked many interesting conversations and certainly provided me with plenty of food for thought. I recommend it to all construction professionals who want to find out more about the latest systems on the market.
RedSky will be attending DCW 2022, which will take place next May. In case you missed us at this year’s event or have further questions about RedSky Document Management and Project Collaboration software, simply email hello@redskyit.com, call us at +44 (0) 203 002 8600 or request a demo on our product page.
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