{"id":100027,"date":"2021-10-06T07:30:28","date_gmt":"2021-10-06T06:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbctoday.co.uk\/news\/?p=100027"},"modified":"2021-10-05T14:03:56","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T13:03:56","slug":"email-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbctoday.co.uk\/news\/planning-construction-news\/email-management\/100027\/","title":{"rendered":"AEC email management: The real cost of losing an email"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2026And how to protect yourself in a dispute<\/h2>\n

Despite being the most used communication and collaboration tools<\/a> in many industries, email also holds huge risks for businesses. Over 319bn emails are sent and received around the world every day, and almost everyone manages their inbox differently.<\/p>\n

AEC firms are feeling the burn<\/a> from poor email management. Failing to effectively manage your email means you don\u2019t know where your business-critical emails are, how they\u2019re stored, and you struggle to find the right information when you need it.<\/p>\n

When is the last time you lost an email?<\/h3>\n

This is a stressful situation, to say the least. It\u2019s not uncommon that you might spend hours or days looking or a specific project-related email<\/a> that you\u2019ve sent to a client. Or worse still, having to complete reworks because you can\u2019t find what you\u2019re looking for. Poor email management is a huge productivity drain.<\/p>\n

What happens when things go wrong?<\/h3>\n

We see it happen all the time. Businesses don\u2019t realise how important an email is until something goes wrong. The power of documents and correspondence is unparalleled, and we\u2019ve personally seen several clients win legal disputes purely because they were able to locate correspondence from projects completed years ago.<\/p>\n

Keeping track of all your project correspondence and having clear audit trails will always benefit you and your company. Every member of a team needs to ensure all project information, including legacy information from completed projects, is stored correctly and discoverable. These are the difference between winning or losing a dispute, should one arise.<\/p>\n

Costs of disputes in the AEC<\/h3>\n

The latest Arcadis Global Construction Disputes Report<\/a> uncovered that the average cost of global disputes was $30.7m, with the average dispute lasting 15 months. They also found that the overall volume of disputes increased in the last 12 months, citing poorly drafted or incomplete, unsubstantiated claims being the new number one cause for construction disputes.<\/p>\n

In our own research, the 2021 State of the AEC Report<\/a>, we found that 66% of respondents experienced some form of legal dispute since the beginning of the pandemic, and of these, the most common causes indicated were:<\/p>\n