The construction sector is considered to be one of the most information intensive industries. Construction project participants exchange an extensive amount of data and information on a regular basis. In this electronic age, it comes to no surprise that construction employees have become entirely dependent on the convenience of email for communications. However, many tend to use email as an informal mode of communication resulting in the potential for inconsistent project commitments, inflammatory, crude, and irrelevant messages that could result in legal disputes.
All organizations should be made aware that under law, all electronic records can be requested at anytime and must be provided by court order.
This begs the question: If your organization was to be sued, could you provide records of all communications and transactions conducted by your project personnel during the project dates relating to certain issues during the project?
If you do not have a formal plan in place to handle document retention, a court could penalize you for failing to properly preserve your records. If an e-discovery issue arises and your company did not retain the emails, you may not have any idea what was said for that project. Worse yet would be if the opposing council has an email sent from your firm that you are unaware of.
Luckily, there is a solution that could easily avoid these concerns and more: Email Archiving. Implementing an email archiving system allows you to search across the enterprise for all incoming and outgoing communications, project related or otherwise. Searching from an email archiving system offers additional search functions and shortens the time to locate critical communications. This increases productivity and reduces risk of dispute & litigation. Beyond the legal implications, implementing an email archival system allows you to better manage the large volumes of existing emails and file attachments that continue to grow exponentially. Remember, the mantra that “the firm with the most documentation wins” only holds true if the firm can find their documents.
Implementing a system to accelerate a company creatively is Pund-IT’s goal. Pund-IT has reliable solutions personalized to the construction sector with email archiving, security, collaboration, and communication requirements tailored to ensure you do not face legal issues. Contact sales@pund-it.ca to find out more and #TechAboutIT.
