Bridging the Gap: Using Technology to Improve Home Handovers and Defect Management
In Australia’s highly competitive market, it is critical industry professionals understand the role technology can play in solving common pain points during all stages of the construction process, including after construction ends.
Common pain points in residential construction include lack of effective communication and transparency. As construction finishes and a project moves into the handover and postoccupancy phase, teething problems may begin to show putting additional strain on the client-project team relationship. A negative client experience during this period can lead to disputes and harm to the project team’s reputation through word-of-mouth.
Handover and post-occupancy workflows are often overlooked. It is critical for professionals to identify technology-driven customer engagement solutions that address this gap.
The Lack of Consumer-friendly Project Management
In recent years, the construction industry has adopted technology to support paperless project management and communication. This includes AUTOCAD, client portals and common tools like email and Excel. However, clients still tend to rely on printouts and filing cabinets to store important project documents, increasing the risk of complications and inefficiency post-handover. Client portals help by storing important files in one location, but they often become redundant after construction is completed.
Without technology tools to address client communication and defect management during handover and post-occupancy, homeowners can feel as though they have been left with a house requiring ongoing remediation and no support. These situations can result in feelings of unnecessary grief and frustration in homeowners.
The Role of Technology in Home Ownership and Management
Once construction ends, builders are required to conduct a handover. This is commonly done by providing the homeowner with printed project documents or files on a USB key. Lost or misplaced files can lead to delays, whereas printing files can be costly and time-consuming. As home management tasks like paying bills and managing appliances become more onlinebased, it makes sense for builders to provide homeowners with a digital ‘twin’ of their home to enable convenient home management.
A cloud-based system would provide an accessible and organised means of document management. Appliance information, manuals and warranties can be accessed from one location, making resolving simple issues like operating alarms and ovens easy and straightforward. Tracking and digitising project information from the outset of the building process ensures no transition period is required.
The Value of Word-of-mouth… From Someone You’ve Never Met
If the handover and post-occupancy phase is mismanaged, architects, designers and builders expose themselves to commercial risk and reputational harm. A project could be well-executed during the design and construction phase yet fall over during the warranty period or perform below client expectations. This situation can lead to disputes and feelings of disappointment, loss of trust and frustration.
Negative client experiences can result in wordof-mouth that can harm the architect, designer or builder’s reputation. In the digital age, where growing numbers of people are trusting online reviews as much as personal recommendations, this bad word-of-mouth can spread quickly across a wide network of consumers.
Houselab
Built with a passion for the design and construction industry, Houselab is focused on closing the gap between the customer and the construction industry during construction, handover and post-occupancy. Aimed at improving communication, document management and workflows between all stakeholders when renovating and managing homes, Houselab is an integrated customer engagement platform that offers an intuitive, user-friendly interface for architects, designers, developers, builders, real estate agencies, body corporates and homeowners alike.