---
title: "Measuring the Cost of Disconnected Information in Construction"
description: "See how disconnected construction information drives rework, disputes, and long-term asset risk—and how a shared taxonomy helps preserve project knowledge."
datePublished: 2026-09-09
dateModified: 2026-09-09
canonical: https://theconstructionstandard.com/blog/cost-of-disconnected-information
publisher: The Construction Standard
topics:
  - "construction information"
  - "construction disputes"
  - "construction rework"
  - "MasterFormat"
  - "UniFormat"
  - "OmniClass"
  - "CSI Dynamic Standards"
  - "construction taxonomy"
  - "project information management"
---

# Measuring the Cost of Disconnected Information in Construction

Published 2026-09-09 by The Construction Standard

A construction project passes through hundreds of hands before it’s finished – sometimes even tens of thousands on a large project. Architects hand off to specifiers, specifiers to estimators, estimators to contractors, and contractors to the facilities teams that will run the building for the next 50 to 100 years or more. Every one of those handoffs is a chance for detail and intent to get lost or misinterpreted.

We’ve heard from several owners that an estimated 30% of every dollar is wasted in a given project between the first drawing and the final invoice. While the exact number varies depending on who you ask, there are commonalities in the source of the waste: rework, excess RFIs and change orders, delays, inaccurate estimates, and disputes.

> **The impact of that disconnect adds up – particularly into financial and legal risks for companies.**
>
> **$56M — Average cost of a dispute**
>
> Arcadis’ [latest report](https://www.arcadis.com/en-us/expertise/contract-solutions) cited the average dispute costing $56M and lasting over 12 months, with errors and omissions in contract documents holding steady as one of the industry’s top two dispute causes for years.

The same report ranks good communication as the most effective way to avoid a claim in the first place, followed by contract and specification reviews. Quality of information is not just about efficiency, but is a direct driver of cost and enterprise risk.

## Relying on a Shared Taxonomy

The earlier a project settles on one consistent way to organize and label its own information, the less that information degrades as it changes hands. A shared, agreed-upon system for naming and categorizing things helps to ensure when an architect refers to a wall assembly, the estimator, contractor, and facilities manager down the line are all looking at the same wall assembly, described the same way, instead of reinventing their own version of it.

[MasterFormat®](https://www.csiresources.org/standards/masterformat2026), [UniFormat®](https://www.csiresources.org/standards/uniformat/about-uniformat), and [OmniClass®](https://www.csiresources.org/standards/omniclass/standards-omniclass-about) serve as this taxonomy in the construction industry. MasterFormat organizes specifications (the legal document that spells out exactly what gets built) by work result, things like concrete, doors, or electrical. Those specifications help establish project requirements and contractual responsibilities. UniFormat organizes the same building by system – structure, enclosure, mechanical. OmniClass ties the two together with a broader classification that extends across the life of the asset. Since its founding in 1948, CSI has worked to develop and maintain standards that give the industry a common reference point and language from first concept sketch through design, bidding, construction, and the decades of operation that follow.

![Construction standards mapped across enterprise processes from design through dispute resolution](https://imagedelivery.net/YVJ3NQP9JnlgC3Z6OdmekA/61a7d81e-b6dc-4f80-4a77-47ccfae4b200/hdsquare)

## Costs That Outlast the Ribbon Cutting

Preserving this information helps owners operate, maintain, renew, and value assets over decades. Once a building is occupied, it’s typical that architects, contractors, and even owner project teams move on. The owner is left managing NOI, reconciling CAM changes, tracking energy and HVAC performance, running preventive maintenance, funding replacement reserves, planning capital projects, and eventually walking a lender or buyer through a refinancing or a sale. Each activity depends on knowing exactly what is in the building and why it was built that way.

CDS is built to preserve that information. MasterFormat, UniFormat, and OmniClass provide a consistent way of naming and organizing everything in a building, so that whoever needs that information later is reading the same classification that the architect and contractors used years earlier, instead of guessing or recreating from scratch.

The same fragmented information that produces a change order during construction is exactly what a facilities team needs a decade later to size a boiler replacement, or what a buyer’s counsel needs during due diligence on a sale. When that information is not there, or doesn’t agree with itself, the cost resurfaces as deferred maintenance, as a lender’s risk discount, or as the next $56M dispute.

A shared taxonomy, carried through a project on a common structure like PPD, is what makes sure the information handed off along the way is still usable when the owner needs it – whether it’s at closeout or ten, twenty, or fifty years later.

## Related resources

- [MasterFormat overview](https://theconstructionstandard.com/masterformat)
- [UniFormat overview](https://theconstructionstandard.com/uniformat)
- [OmniClass overview](https://theconstructionstandard.com/omniclass)
- [The Construction Standard resources](https://theconstructionstandard.com/resources)