3 Ways Real Estate Developers Keep Vendors on Schedule

A complex real estate project can have upwards of 200 vendors – everything from a site surveyor to a lighting designer. With so many moving parts, it’s no surprise that the overall success of a project relies greatly on every vendor completing their respective job on time and within their allotted budget. That may sound like a huge undertaking requiring a whole lot of energy and resources, but by focusing on three key areas, commercial real estate developers and owners can simplify an otherwise unwieldy process. 

Set vendors up for success by ensuring your project team is in a position to:

1. Consistently pay invoices on time. Not only does this tarnish your reputation as a reliable client, but if payments become so delayed that vendors deprioritize your job and stop showing up to your site, you will easily lose 1-3 days of progress on your critical path each month (which can add up to months of lost time over the course of a multi-year project!). Keeping track of all vendor contracts + invoices is critical to making payments on time and keeping your vendors and consultants motivated. Letting even one vendor fall behind schedule can have a cascading impact that negatively affects the success of your other vendors, throwing an entire project awry, and resulting in more project delays, acceleration + overtime payments needed to catch-up, and millions of dollars lost over the lifetime of a project.
   
   
2. Clearly communicate any changes in design, materials or expectations. Vendors can only complete their job if they have all the necessary information. If there’s a change in owner's direction or to even minor design decisions, your team of vendors and consultants should be able to recognize that immediately and communicate any updates in a timely manner as to not disrupt the flow of work. Without proper instructions, vendors could end up completing work that is no longer necessary or installing the wrong materials, again losing time and money.  
   
   
3. Track, anticipate and account for any obstacles before they impact a vendor’s work. In order to keep everything running smoothly, you’ll need to be able to look ahead and identify important trends and challenges arising on our project as well as upcoming milestones that could impact a vendor’s job. Maybe unforeseen field conditions are impacting your budget, or bottlenecked decisions on RFI’s slowed construction resulting in delays to your schedule; you’ll need to readjust your larger strategy to keep ahead of any negative fallout and cost escalations. Keeping track of your 1000+ vendor documents (invoices, contracts, certificates of insurance, changes, etc.) is a good place to start to avoid schedule slippage, progress blockages and budgeting issues. But being able to leverage real-time data when thinking about the strategic direction of your project is even better.  

Experienced project delivery teams won’t be shocked by this shortlist. In fact, you’re probably spending (way too) much of your time trying to keep everything organized and on track yet still find yourself falling behind. The solution? Use a technology that leverages automation, data analytics and proactive intelligence so you are always armed with current, real-time information to make fast, critical decisions. 

With Northspyre, you’ll be able to:

• Store all vendor contracts, invoices, COIs (certificates of insurance) and change orders – historical and current – in an easily accessible, centralized platform (without any data entry on your end).
• Quickly glean insights from that data to make sure all invoices are paid on time and that you’re accounting for any change orders, new design direction(s) or other outside factors that could derail your project.
• Create a more low-maintenance, consistent workflow. This will result in a more informed project team that is better equipped to keep vendors on a tight schedule – all while saving your highly-skilled employees multiple days worth of time a month by eliminating data entry and tedious administrative tasks.

Curious to learn more? Book a demo to see how Northspyre will keep your vendors - and projects - on track for success.