Meanwhile back on site…..there was no crime, so why all the evidence?

I remember it was lunchtime, it was early December and it was a hot day.

We were in the shade of a verandah, there were three builders and three project subbies (I included myself amongst the latter, even though it was my project but we were a team).

We all sat forming roughly a circle, each of us was seated on an esky in the shade.

The discussion chopped and changed more times in 5 minutes than I care to remember and everyone was at once either sagely nodding or uproariously laughing, slapping their thighs as one of us regaled the others with a tale about something (they were all probably entirely invented, but that was also not the point).

One of the group shifted gear and began explaining sullenly how he had to prepare for a hearing the next Tuesday. I thought “what? A hearing?”

It was Thursday lunchtime, so I asked “glad you’re not leaving anything until the last minute.”

I think the cocked eyebrow I got in response neatly summed up his opinion of my question.

Instead, he said (sorry, he was Pete, a builder, sort of a mate, softly spoken, deeply tanned weathered skin, like an old wallet, calm, stoic, but always smiling, a builder) “I swear it’ll take me all weekend to get all of this crap together.”

I wondered, why. So, I asked him “mate, how come?”

“How come what” he snapped, as if I’d said something offensive.

I studied the other four faces, all looking on, nodding sagely, wisely, no thigh slapping now.

“How come it’ll take all weekend?” I asked, I thought it was a reasonable question but the problem you see was that by now, as we were working on probably our 3rd project as a team, they’d become used to me asking questions loaded with ulterior motives.

Pete said to me “Tony, paperwork, all the information, the contracts, all the variations, all the bills, all the progress claims, all that paperwork, and I need to log calls with the client too, I mean it’s going to take me every minute of the weekend.”

“And then some” I said, just to rub it in. But Pete wasn’t smiling any longer. And I got why.

I asked him “so Pete, just to clarify, all of this is paper based and all of it is filed how?”

“What do you mean filed how?” he asked me, defensively.

“Well, I’m guessing that it ain’t on your laptop, so what, have you got a bunch of Lever Arch files, it’s all paper, yes?”

“Yes, it’s all paper” he said emphatically almost spitting the words, I sensed his frustration.

“Mate, I’m not the bad guy, I didn’t file the claim for the dispute, I’m just trying to work out how to make any easier, if I can” I offered.

He lamented “you can’t make it easier Tony, there’s too much paperwork and they demand more and more every time I push to resolve this. I mean, it’s crazy, the agreement is there, it’s signed, the variations are all there too. They always want more and I can’t afford to get a lawyer involved but really, why all the evidence, no crime’s being committed, other than me not being paid!” as if that really mattered, but I guess he had a point.

But the evidence bit was unavoidable. I pictured in my head the victim’s outline I’d seen in any of a million cop shows over the years and I thought, yeah, that’s it.

Every dispute boils down to failed communication, and every failed communication is easily overcome with evidence. And it’s so easily overcome, but probably not in any way that might help Pete out of his filing jam. It’s just a case of having access to the data and when I say access to data, I don’t mean folders and boxes of paper either.

I was itching to tell Pete how simple it was to solve this, but I knew that was the last thing he wanted to hear right now.

What he wanted was for me to wave a magic wand and produce the paperwork that his archaic filing system couldn’t help make materialise between then and the coming Tuesday.

It’s a shame, but Lever Arch (I’m not having a go at Lever Arch, we all have some) folders don’t have search bars where you can type in what you’re after. At least in the cloud your own ineptitude, lack of time or lazy filing can be forgiven by a thing called a search engine.

Putting the impossible to one side (sorry Pete), if every skerrick of paper had been saved to a folder in the cloud, then everything needed could be searched, found, copied and saved to produce for whomever needs it. The notion of (ever) saving data to a server is also a fading, almost antiquated, perspective.

You need data, you need evidence remotely, then there’s the cloud or nothing. There truly is no longer any reason to rely on hard copies of anything and when you need evidence of something then digital is the only solution.

Then I thought about him having to produce client communications logs. I couldn’t bear it, I had to ask “Pete, please tell me you captured all your calls and messages in something like WhatsApp?”

The stare I got back from him told me what I’d suspected and I also eerily sensed that victim outline might suddenly materialise around me!

All that time ago, this led us to create one of the most robust and verifiable client project communications tool imaginable. Evidence, verified, mobile, guaranteed.

The cost, the accessibility, the security, it’s all too compelling to ignore and we’re proving that to more and more people with every passing day.

Start with the evidence and put disputes (or the possibility of them) to bed before they even start with cold hard digital data, remotely, right there at your fingertips.

© Tony Huxley, Trabr Limited 2020