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Here's an interesting stat. Project stakeholders were asked about the causes of poor communication. The top reason was being unresponsive to questions and requests. We've all experienced that, chasing people, trying to get an answer out of someone. Let's take a few steps back and look at what we use to communicate to our fellow project team members.

All projects generate lots of correspondence. If we want to reduce miscommunication, we need to understand how Aconex helps with the mail module. Aconex mail is similar to email in day-to-day use.

And we'll look at some of the key differences next. It's used as a method to communicate with the project team and within your own team too. It's used to ask questions, provide answers to questions, and to give direction or instruction.

Years of experience have confirmed to us that poor communication within a project team is easily one of the biggest causes of project delays and increased project costs. Before we explain what makes Aconex mail different, let's get back to basics with communications. It's really easy to get bogged down in all the types of correspondence used on a project, not to mention all the abbreviations and acronyms. It's much easier to think about communications and correspondence in terms of their reason. And there are really only three reasons we communicate.

The first is asking questions or requesting something. A request for information or RFI is a great example of this. Next is where we provide information or advice to someone. Often there is no obligation with this, but that doesn't mean we should be lazy in providing that information or advice.

The final reason we communicate is to provide direction or instruction. In a project context, these often do have some kind of obligation associated with them. Maybe there's a penalty if there's not action within a specific time frame. And examples of these include things like site instructions and change orders. It's really useful to come back to these three reasons when discussing communications on a project.

Remember that stat at the beginning? What if there are multiple ways to ask a question or provide instruction? That can easily cause confusion and result in miscommunication. Coming back to three reasons and making sure that everyone knows what type of communication is being used by whom and when is always going to help.

Let's finish with the key differences of a Aconex mail. Even though it's similar to email, there are a couple of differences worth noting. First, there are no limits in terms of the number of miles, attachment size, or recipients, so no more warnings about your mailbox being full.

Second, once a mail is sent, it cannot be deleted or altered. And this provides a complete and reliable audit trail of all communications and conversations. And then, finally, Aconex annex ensures delivery of each mail item within the project, and that means no mail is ever lost.