Snag Management Case Study

In the dynamic landscape of Qatar’s construction industry, our client is recognized as one of the premier construction companies in the region. As their projects evolved in scale and intricacy, the reliance on traditional paperwork and extensive project reports became a bottleneck. They faced challenges in their snag management process due to a lack of software assistance to centralize their snag management activities. As a result, it became difficult for the stakeholders to manage work and bring effective communication and efficiency to the team. They needed a technology solution that centralized the snag management list into a single environment to enable several collaborators and contributors to work together effectively.

Challenges:

• Limited visibility
• Workflow inefficiencies
• Lack of communication and transparency with clients
• Tracking resources, schedules and documents in Excel
• Client Reporting

During the snag management process, the client had timeline constraints on certain activities due to project schedules. Fire System checks, Electrical System inspections and Security System checks could only be scheduled only after completing Structural and Floor Quality Inspections. Delays in follow ups and closure of ongoing tasks due to limited visibility were pushing the timeline further making it harder to set dates and coordinate with subcontractors and inspection personnel for further activities. Having a limited visibility of ongoing tasks also increased workflow inefficiencies for the involved personnel. The absence of a centralized snag management list also resulted in a lack of communication and transparency with clients.

The client had a wide variety of stakeholders who needed to work together closely but cross functionally. This included the project owners, project supervisors, clients, engineers, contractors, MEP and QC Engineers. Tracking resources through Excel was tedious and resulted in errors and omissions of important details. The client was also unable to follow a reporting structure during the snag management activities. Maintaining a reporting structure and assigning tasks was becoming a challenge as Supervisors were unable to identify personnel to assign different types and levels of QC and Inspection issues. Thus, a list of requirements for a centralized snag management system was identified and a solution was to be designed accordingly.

Requirements:

• Punchlist Management
• Migrating data from third party application
• Onsite punch tagging
• Daily, Weekly and Monthly Inspection Logs
• Quality Control Verification
• Task Reports
• More Visibility
• Centralized Source for Activity Management

Solution:

The client was initially managing the snag management process through Excel Spreadsheets, WhatsApp Messages and Emails. However, it started to become overwhelming as they kept piling up. They realized they needed help and started looking for a comprehensive snag management solution. The client approached our team and scheduled a demo of QPunch-Smart Project Management Tool. They found QPunch as an intuitive platform simplifying snag management process, designed for general contractors, MEP and QC which was able to comprehend and visualize the large number of activities at a glance and more effectively.

QPunch helped them replace their excel sheets with one single enterprise solution that the entire team could rely on. Users get a dashboard view of everything they’re working on and thus save time spent searching through paperwork and past reports.

 QPunch also streamlined their onboarding process, breaking it down into smaller manageable steps and providing clear instructions to guide them through each stage with an easy-to-use interface. QPunch ensured the team is working as efficiently as possible. During the initial stage we helped them to manage the project and perform quality assurance tests. Later, QPunch became a necessity to keep everything under control. QPunch greatly helped with requirements gathering by allowing easy collaboration with embedding of media like photos, videos and documents, adding comments, and allowing flexible ways to organize and store data. QPunch allowed a great deal of transparency across various sectors of snag management process contributing to a product that’s truly a collaborative effort every step of the way.

Solution Customization to fit the requirements:

QPunch offered a customizable project dashboard that allowed our client to create a tailored onboarding experience for different snag management processes. They found the ability to upload the video contents, images and documents relevant to their tasks to be immensely helpful. These were traditionally shared via email. By centralizing the content in QPunch, it also encouraged other team members to engage with the platform more frequently.

Through feedback, the system was customized by providing a simple dashboard, changing the swim lanes name, Customized field names and adding additional fields relevant to their workflow.

The above GIF is one of the sample project dashboard view QPunch has customized. This gives a comprehensive view of the progress of each task, coworker’s workload, identification of bottlenecks and determining how long they are taking to complete.

We have customized the field names based on the customer requirements. Labels were replaced with Building and Category was replaced with Room No.

We also provided additional fields relevant for the users such as Closed date, Disc, Floor, Remark to understand and distinguish better among other tasks. Also, there is additional Actionee list named as Verified By and Concurred By who is responsible to verify the task and who has the authority to take decision on this task.

We have added sorting and filtering functionality based on the customized field names. The user can sort the tickets based on Target date, Priority etc. Also, if the user wants to filter some specific punches in the same Building or Room No. or specific to any contractor or user it is possible with the filter functionality.

We customized and added new project roles for the users and provided different set of permissions for each project role. Some team members have view only access, others have restricted move access from one swim lane to other and not everyone has the permission to create tasks as well. This helped the customer to keep the data safe and secure. Users can access and use their snag list from anywhere.

The client was also able to use a laptop at the office, or complete the report with relevant photos on mobile/tablet from site. It helped them get real-time analytics & insights on snag list and general quality performance. Finally, customer can extract, download or print completed snag list as custom branded excel document from the snag report to the end user or their clients.

Conclusion:

With the QPunch tool customer was able to handle multiple projects at a time and juggle with people, tasks and goals to ensure that every project is successful. We made it easy to view plans, track issues and schedule tasks whether you are on or off the field. It helped the management to communicate in one centralized place and bring everyone on the same page and define priorities. Full time support, guidance and further customization was provided by our team.