We're excited to share this guest blog by Vista Projects, a leading integrated industrial engineering firm. This feature explores how Vista Project's truth-based program can help organizations navigate the digital transformation of their projects and operations, something that's very near and dear to our hearts here at 4castplus. Keep reading to learn more.

Construction projects rely on strong communication across the entire team to ensure everyone is working from the same information and there are no misunderstandings getting in the way of quality and productivity. Miscommunications among the project team can lead to costly and potentially disastrous results, not to mention a frustrated and angry client.

I recently had a meeting with a group of project managers and engineers at a mid-size oil & gas producer. For managing their construction projects, this team have an immediate need to improve efficiency, improve project cost reporting, and reduce the amount of manual movement of documents. Especially the high number of documents shared through emails. Throughout the meeting, the four guys were passionately articulating their many diverse challenges they have day-to-day and month-to-month. Each time one piped up to speak about his own version of the ideal solution they needed, another would chime in with a slightly different take on his version of utopia.  They went back and forth just unleashing their troubles and desires for a better system. My role in meetings like this is often to listen and facilitate. And, ultimately, to distill their needs down to a straightforward plan that would improve how they operate, and simplify their lives.

You're Not Alone. Project cost overruns are common.

Statistics will tell you that over 85% of projects go over budget. But Why? What are the mechanics behind project cost overruns and project schedule delays? Plenty of talented and experienced professionals engage in dialog about this very topic every day, and try to arrive at conclusions about how to stop projects from going over budget. In this article I’d like to shed some light on the underlying workings as to the root causes of cost overruns and schedule delays. In order to tackle the problem of how to eliminate overruns, it’s important to understand the main reasons why they happen.