According to our friends over at FieldLens, an app that is described as the jobsite in your pocket, the United States construction industry wastes more than $40 billion every year due to mistakes in the field. Let us repeat that – each calendar year, the United States construction industry wastes more than $40 billion due to mistakes in the field.

That is absolutely, positively, absurd.

The number comes from a study performed by the American Society of Civil Engineers in which they discovered that 5% of the total US construction spend is attributed to “re-work.” In market that spends about $800 billion annually, that translates to $40 billion in wasted expenditures each year. Either somebody is misplacing lots of hammers and screwdrivers, or there are some major flaws in job-site efficiency, process and documentation. We’ll safely assume it’s the latter.

In a time of economic uncertainty (we know, we know – you’ve heard it before), such inefficiencies simply can’t happen. And often, mistakes on job sites don’t just stop with costs for repairs, etc. Mistakes lead to missed deadlines, more man-hours, more risk for injury…you see where we’re going here. Wasted hours are bad – really, really bad.

As our friends note on a great blog post about the $40 Billion wasted every year, “Construction projects are all about communication. When communication breaks down and information is not available bad stuff happens.” That’s where apps like TruQC and FieldLens aim to make a difference. We create a better channel for communication and documenting that the said communication did indeed happen. No job site can be too accountable.

Together, with forward thinkers like our friends in NYC at FieldLens, we can make the job-site more efficient, better documented, and most importantly, a safer place to call “work”.