Here at Procore, we’re always amazed to find out how many companies have trouble tracking their construction project information. If you have trouble keeping all of your project documents, photos, RFIs, change orders, daily logs and punch list items organized, you’re not alone.
You might say, “My company has a handle on all this document stuff. I’m sure everyone on the job site is doing just fine tracking all of our project information.”
Maybe.
As part of our plea for you to check on your company’s project document tracking process, we submit this recent story from the Associated Press.
It seems from this article that even the most high-profile projects are not immune to document mis-management:
Report: NYC Freedom Tower plans found in trash
(04-18) 14:52 PDT New York (Associated Press)—
The government agency building a 102-story skyscraper at the World Trade Center site is investigating the discovery of two sets of blueprints for the building that a homeless man says he found in the trash.
The schematic documents for the Freedom Tower, under construction at ground zero, were marked “Secure Document — Confidential,” the New York Post reported Friday.
The documents, dated Oct. 5, 2007, contain plans for each floor, the thickness of the concrete-core wall, and the location of air ducts, elevators, electrical systems and support columns, the Post reported.
Michael Fleming told the newspaper he found the documents on top of a public trash can in downtown Manhattan, with written warnings on it to “properly destroy if discarded.”
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the World Trade Center and is building the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower, has protocols requiring contractors and architects with secure and nonsecure documents to shred them, spokeswoman Candace McAdams said.
The agency’s inspector general is investigating the disposal of the documents, which McAdams said are bidding documents given out to contractors, agency staff and selected companies bidding on work.
Mishandling the blueprints would be “cause for serious disciplinary action — up to termination for employees and breach of contract and legal action for contractors,” she said, although she added the plans have been updated many times since October.
City police weren’t investigating the disposal; Tishman Construction Corp., the main contractor building the tower, declined to comment Friday. A spokesman for the building’s architect, Skidmore Owings & Merrill, didn’t return a message seeking comment.
Interested in managing your project documents more effectively? Get started with Procore today and store an unlimited number of documents and photos in a single, secure online location.
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