Streamlining Construction Documents with Electronic Signatures: Why WeSignature Leads the Way
In the fast-paced construction industry, managing paperwork can feel like a project of its own. Every delay, whether it’s waiting on a subcontractor to mail back a signed agreement or chasing down a project manager for a wet signature, directly impacts your schedule and bottom line. It’s no surprise that nearly 98% of megaprojects face delays or cost overruns, often averaging 20 months behind schedule.
MSB Docs has published statistics showing the increase in the frequency of e-signature use over the past five years. In just five years, the number of global e-signature transactions has climbed from 198 million to 4,754 million. This statistic proves the growing popularity of digital solutions in the business world.
Companies prefer the construction electronic signature option when signing their contracts and documents. This is because electronic signatures save time and cost compared to handwritten signatures. The benefits provided by the electronic signature indicate that its use will increase in the coming years.
In fact, 95% of businesses are either using or planning to use document e-signature technology in their workflows – a clear sign that digital signing has gone from a novelty to a necessity in modern construction.E-signature usage has increased significantly in the last five years.
Why Digital Signatures Are a Game-Changer for Construction
We’ve all heard the saying “time is money,” and nowhere is that truer than on a job site. Traditional paper processes—printing contracts, driving to collect signatures, scanning and emailing documents—introduce massive inefficiencies. Research shows construction professionals spend up to 35% of their time on non-productive activities like searching for documents and handling paperwork.
With manual processes, documents get lost (about 7.5% of all paperwork goes missing!), versions get mixed up, and there’s often no clear audit trail of who signed what and when. This not only wastes time but can lead to costly disputes if something is missed or signed incorrectly. For compliance officers, such gaps pose serious risks.
Electronic signatures directly tackle these issues. By digitizing your document workflows, you create a faster, more transparent process. For example, what used to take 3–7 days of back-and-forth with paper can now be completed in 5–15 minutes using an e-signature platform. Imagine emailing a contract or change order to all parties at once – they review it on their phone or laptop and sign with a few clicks, wherever they are. No overnight mail, no printing or scanning. It’s that simple. Not only are you saving days of waiting, but you’re also cutting out printing and courier costs. Going paperless can reduce administrative spending by over 50% and eliminate costs for shipping and storage, boosting your profitability in an industry with tight margins.
Faster Subcontractor Agreements and Change Orders
For project managers and subcontractors, two of the most paperwork-heavy tasks are onboarding new subs and processing change orders. These are also two areas where delays hurt the most. A slow-moving subcontractor agreement can hold up a crew’s start date, and a change order stuck on someone’s desk can pause work on critical tasks.
Electronic signatures speed up these slow-moving document signature processes. With WeSignature, you can send a complete subcontractor package (contract, W-9, insurance certs, etc.) in one go, and get them all signed and returned digitally in a fraction of the time it used to take. This means crews get on site and start work faster, keeping your project on schedule.
Change orders, notorious for causing disputes and delays, see an even bigger transformation. Instead of printing out forms and hunting down the architect, owner, and GC for their signatures, an e-signature workflow lets you route the change order to all signatories simultaneously. They can sign from any device, anywhere – whether the owner is in another city or the contractor is in the field.
Tracking is automatic: you always know who has signed and who still needs to, thanks to real-time dashboards and notifications. No more phone tag or wondering if “the mail went out.” The result? Approvals that used to span a week of emails and meetings are often completed before the morning coffee gets cold. In fact, studies show that with e-signatures, up to 76% of agreements are finalized in under a day, and 50% in under 15 minutes, an incredible boost to project velocity.
On-the-Go Approvals from Any Location
Construction isn’t a desk job. Project managers roam between the site and the office, executives might travel between projects, and subcontractors are often on remote job locations. Relying on someone to be physically present to sign a document causes major bottlenecks.
Electronic signature solutions shine by enabling remote site approvals and truly mobile workflows. Picture this: a subcontractor in the field reviews and signs a change order on a smartphone, the project manager in a site trailer approves a daily report on a tablet, and the owner across the country e-signs the final agreement on their laptop – all in real time.
We implemented such features as “Email to Sign” and “Text to Sign,” and all the hard work rests on Signer. The email or even SMS makes the difference, as you can request Signatures from Team Members without requiring them to log in or download any software. This level of accessibility ensures that work never has to stop because “the person who needs to sign isn’t here.” Business moves forward without delay, and every stakeholder stays in the loop.
Digital Safety Forms and Compliance Benefits
Compliance officers know that proper documentation can be a lifesaver – legally and literally. Consider all the safety documents and permits that need signing on a job: safety meeting attendance sheets, incident reports, equipment checklists, OSHA compliance forms, daily field reports, and more.
While written documentation increases the chances of employees missing a signature and increases the difficulties of storing and retrieving these documents later after they’re signed, when using electronic signatures to document safety checklists, training acknowledgments, and incident forms, this allows documentation to be electronically signed in real-time via tablets in the work environment.
This allows the signing of documents to occur at the moment the events are taking place, rather than waiting until the end of the workday or during the next meeting. All members of a crew can sign the attendance log for the safety briefing as soon as the briefing is over, using either a team member’s phone or a shared device.
The real-time compliance advantage is huge: you immediately know if any required signature is missing, and you have a time-stamped, tamper-proof record for every safety document. Need to prove that a safety protocol was communicated and acknowledged by all workers? Just pull up the digital log. This kind of audit-ready trail reduces liability and risk for your company.
Security and Legal Compliance
Another issue that we frequently encounter with construction firms that are shifting to e-signatures is whether electronic signatures are legally binding and secure. That is a big YES. ESIGN Act and UETA Act in the United States state that all electronic signatures are legally equivalent to a paper signature, provided that the electronic signature has been executed properly on a qualified electronic signature device.
WeSignature is compliant with all major e-sign laws, including ESIGN and UETA Act; therefore, any documents signed electronically, using WeSignature’s platform, are enforceable legally. For every digital signature, there is an audit trail that captures Who, What, When, and even Where (IP Address), which is an independent, reliable witness that the signing took place in compliance with the law.
Moreover, WeSignature takes a step further by providing encryption services for documents in both transit and at rest as they ensure that any sensitive data, such as personal contracts or subcontractor agreements, is well secured. In addition to this, role-based access controls limit the number of users who are allowed to view and even sign documents, which plays an important role in protecting the security of confidential project plans or bids.
Real-World Impact: Efficiency You Can Measure
The move to electronic signatures isn’t just a feel-good modernization; it delivers quantifiable results. Companies that switch to e-signature see dramatic improvements in turnaround times and productivity. Up to 79% of agreements are signed within 24 hours when using e-signature solutions, drastically accelerating project workflows.
Depending on how contracts are traditionally processed, overall processing times may be reduced in the range of 28% to even as much as 80% in certain instances. Therefore, think about how that relates to the construction lifecycle. Many activities that would typically have taken weeks or more of time will likely be done within days rather than weeks or months. This means that fewer delays on your project will help maintain your project schedule, and ultimately, save you costs associated with your crews waiting or trailers being extended for rental periods due to incomplete paperwork.
WeSignature: The Best E-Signature Platform
Several e-signature platforms do not compare as far as catering to specific requirements in the construction marketplace. Since WeSignature was built around actual workflows of the construction industry, we have become the preferred choice of employers, contractors, subcontractors, and compliance departments.
By allowing users to send, sign, and approve documents from any internet-connected device quickly and easily, WeSignature reduces unnecessary delays associated with the signing and approval process; therefore, we help keep projects on track, enabling you to stay within budget and timeline. Here are just a couple of examples of the ways WeSignature is superior:
Here are the key features of WeSignature for construction companies:
- Easy for everyone: Signing and sending documents can be done without having extensive knowledge of technology. This means that even someone who might not typically utilize a computer can sign documents with WeSignature.
- Mobile & At Work Signing: WeSignature is designed to work on a vast array of mobile devices. Users can sign documents anywhere, regardless of the cellular network they are using. In addition, WeSignature also offers a “text-to-sign” option for signing documents while on the job site, allowing users to easily review and sign documents.
- Templates and Document Manager: Construction companies continually create similar types of documents, such as labour reports, safety reports, and/or changes. The WeSignature platform allows users to create templates and reusable signature fields to expedite the completion of multiple documents for signature. File management through WeSignature includes a secure cloud storage space for all signed documents, which allows project managers and supervisors to easily access the latest copies whenever required, eliminating the need to sift through email and hard copies located in the filing cabinets.
- Robust Security & Compliance: As previously stated, WeSignature has met the security requirements of the construction industry, including encryption for sensitive information and providing customers with an exit/entry audit trail for verification of signature, as well as following U.S. Laws such as the ESIGN/UETA Acts. All signed documents have an attached audit log, which will enable project managers and compliance officers to be assured that the digital signatures are legally binding, while at the same time protecting their data, which is very important to them.
- Integration Capabilities: WeSignature has both an API and integration capabilities, and can therefore be connected with a construction management system or an existing document management system. This means you can trigger signature requests from your project management tool or automatically update project records once a document is signed. Such integrations save time and reduce errors by avoiding manual data re-entry, fitting seamlessly into your workflow.
Concluding Remarks
Digital transformation is taking over the construction world quickly, and many businesses in the construction sector are adopting electronic signatures as part of using modern, more efficient methods of project management. This will allow subcontractors to onboard and be paid quickly. When using electronic signatures, project managers will no longer be buried under mountains of paper, and all project schedules will be able to remain on time.
Utilising WeSignature as your digital document solution allows your company and its employees access to a system that streamlines and accelerates the signature process for every document. Not only can employees collaborate and approve documents in real time, regardless of location, but they will also be able to do so knowing the electronic signing process has been legally and safely developed and secured.
Ready to eliminate delays and keep your projects moving? With WeSignature’s free trial and unlimited e-signatures, it’s easier than ever to see the benefits for yourself. Embrace the efficiency of electronic signatures and watch how quickly your construction workflows reach new heights of productivity.
