Compliance in the construction industry is very complicated. From regulations ensuring fair subcontractor selection and tender management processes to guidelines on building materials and zoning rules to often complex labor laws and more, there are layers of potential compliance challenges in every phase of construction.
Beyond the financial incentive to avoid the increasingly costly fines of non-compliance with regulatory policies, there are real, measurable benefits to following the regulatory obligations of the construction industry.
A compliant construction firm is more likely to have a more efficient team on the jobsite, a strong health and safety record, an improved financial bottom line, and a great reputation among clients and subcontractors.
One of the most valuable tools modern technology has given us to help construction organizations maintain compliance is eSignature integration. That may come as a surprise to some, but eliminating the wait times and storage issues that come with hard copies of contracts and other important documents creates efficiencies that can support every project.
Procore and Project Management
When it comes to construction projects, Procore is one of the leading tools in the industry for project management. This is because it has been designed with the needs of the construction industry in mind. But that doesn’t mean its capabilities cannot be improved upon.
Procore has an existing DocuSign integration that allows for the usage of eSignatures and is embedded directly into Procore. However, to really get the most out of expanding Procore’s APIs and gain the flexibility to meet numerous and varied legal and compliance needs of the construction industry, you need an API based integration such as Dropbox Sign.
This is not to say that you need to pit Dropbox Sign vs DocuSign, but looking at how these applications perform, what other APIs they perform with, and what can give you the most value is important.
What is Dropbox Sign?
Dropbox Sign, formerly Hello Sign, is a DropBox company specializing in stand-alone and eSignature integration for businesses and organizations of all sizes across a vast spectrum of industries. Dropbox Sign continually gets recognition for the ease of use of its API.
That easy-to-use API means that Dropbox Sign integrations span a wide array of programs and applications, allowing for consistent experiences for your clients, customers, and internal users.
With Dropbox Sign, saving document templates, embedding signature requests, and creating a consistent, branded look are all simplified and ready to deploy as soon as you have your integration up and running.
TEAM IM has been building a customized Procore integration for Dropbox Sign to allow for a higher level of automated interaction with the programs and apps commonly utilized by the construction industry's administrative, financial, and legal departments.
So how does an eSignature integration improve compliance for a construction organization?
Compliance Benefits
It is important to remember that, when looking at compliance in the construction industry, there is both compliance with regulations and legal oversight and compliance with the terms of a contract. Dropbox Sign integrations help with both types of compliance obligations.
ESignature functions help keep businesses moving at a 21st-century pace without generating massive piles of paperwork to sort through. Generally speaking, this means that important information is less likely to get lost in the shuffle.
Here are just a few ways integrating Dropbox Sign into your business can bolster your dedication to compliance.
Closing the Gaps
While construction project managers very commonly use Procore, the rest of the business can operate with many different apps and programs. This can result in gaps where a document or signature request gets missed—which can be costly at best and disastrous at worst.
Having an eSignature integration like Dropbox Sign that already works seamlessly with many of the top document management systems across the spectrum of the business world closes those gaps and helps improve your efforts to maintain compliance in the construction industry.
TEAM’s development of an integration between Dropbox Sign and Procore ensures that bids, tenders, contracts, and more always get the necessary signatures quickly so that you don’t fall out of compliance with either regulators or partners.
You will also ensure that your field services team has seen and is following proper guidelines for inspections and maintenance by giving them a digital checklist that can be marked off and signed directly from the jobsite.
Having a system that uses standardized templates and easy-to-use eSignatures allows you to check on the progress of tender bids, contract offers, building progress, and field services from any device at any time—and it also creates a chain of accountability if something goes wrong and you need to protect your business.
Higher Productivity, Lower Costs
At first, this may not seem like it has too much bearing on compliance in the construction industry. But improving your crews’ productivity and keeping your operational costs low frees up time and money to spot and address potential problems before they get out of hand.
How does integrating an eSignature program like Dropbox Sign improve productivity? By allowing you to go almost entirely paperless.
Suddenly, you don’t have to wait for hard copies or faxes, or scanned images of paperwork. That frees your crews on the ground from waiting on overtime approval or the approval of a purchase order for a material that is running low.
It also frees your administrative team from needing to sort and store hard copies of every single document. If they need to find something, all it takes is a search through your document management system, not a physical hunt through filing cabinets.
In the field, paperless operations improve safety for your workers because they aren’t trying to keep a clipboard from blowing away all the time or sorting through physical checklists while working with potentially dangerous equipment.
They can use mobile devices secured to their persons or even hands-free tech to keep their focus on what they are doing. The important thing is that removing paper can have a big effect on safety and allows for compliance in the construction industry to stay at the forefront of their minds.
Plus, you don’t run the risk of a spilled cup of coffee trashing important papers. If coffee spills on a tablet, it might stop functioning well, but your designs and data won’t be harmed.
Eliminating paper from the jobsite helps your crews focus, which reduces the risk of accidents and legal liability. It also ensures that your crews can get the materials they need faster than they would have in the past and helps your in-office team keep all the documentation from every job your company has in the works sorted and quickly discoverable.
Taking away the costs of paper and reducing wait times on the jobsite while making administrative work simpler and less physically demanding? That’s how Dropbox Sign can improve productivity and reduce costs.
Improving Automation
Bringing more automation into the works is also a way in which Dropbox Sign can improve compliance in the construction industry. While automation could be considered a part of the improved productivity discussed above, it’s really its own thing.
Automation takes tasks that are repetitive and time-consuming for human workers and uses the functionality of an app or program to complete them in a fraction of the time with less risk of error.
A Dropbox Sign integration allows you to take frequently used contract clauses or templates for tender requests and submissions and automatically update them with the parameters of your current project. It also allows for automated notifications when signatures are completed or requested.
By combining the power of Procore with the utility of Dropbox Sign better links your construction project management to your administrative and financial management systems and can even carry tasks over to your field services system.
This creates a more unified approach to all phases of your business and ensures that you can keep uniform, compliant practices across all your jobsites and present any regulatory auditor with accurate, up-to-date information about your methods and practices—and you can do it all automatically, with minimal human error.
Sign of the Times
The world of business isn’t slowing down. And the importance of compliance in the construction industry will never go away. There is too much money and too much impact on the world around a construction job to take compliance lightly.
By taking the relatively small step of embracing TEAM’s Dropbox Sign interface with Procore, you can have a huge impact on your construction compliance plan and compliance management through all phases of your organization.
Leverage the power of Dropbox Sign a Dropbox Company and TEAM IM. Improve productivity, lower overall costs, create a safer jobsite, and show your dedication to compliance in the construction industry by utilizing all the benefits that come with Dropbox Sign. Get started today.
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