Development Process in Construction Management - Essay Example

Hill & Jones (2009) explains a strategy to be a set or related actions that managers have to employ to increase the performance of their projects or companies. A strategy that would result to superior results as compared to the market practices would end up achieving a competitive advantage in the market, and such advantage would result to profitability, efficiency and effectiveness in the building industry. In this article, the planning and initial construction stages would be investigated in light of the applicable management theories that would enhance both efficiency and effectiveness in such a process.

Koontz & Weihrich (2009) explain that the process approach to management theory clearly elaborates the roles of managers in any organization or set up. Generally, the process approach relates to the principles, concepts and techniques that are involved in the process of management. As Kootz & Weihrich elaborate, such activities as staffing, departmentation, managerial appraisals and control techniques can only be well indentified in situations where management is well elaborated. In construction, these processes are well elaborated and utilized effectively in the entire process.

Management may be defined as making things happen through people; meaning that the process of planning, directing, controlling, staffing and remunerating have to be well elaborated in such processes as some of the concepts that have to be applied in such building stages. System theory is one of the theories that would be applicable in the construction stages. Process theory will require that the manager has to view the whole process as a systematic and linked process rather than several individual steps that make up the whole (Koontz & Weihrich, 2009).

From site exploration and demarcation, site preparation, material delivery, hiring of qualified staff and relocating them to site, allocation of the relevant equipment and facilities, and the allocation of the respective duties to the hired staff; the manager in the construction project has to carry out each task systematically, and in respect to the priority of such tasks. This is in line with the planning task in management that has to involve systematic decisions and evaluation of the necessary steps to be taken in accomplishing the respective task.

In this respect, the functional manager in charge of the construction project has to be involved in each of the above planning process before the actual project commences to ensure a smooth flow of operations once the project is initiated without delays and unnecessary idle time in site. Theories in Supply chain management have to be articulated at the planning stage or before the building project commences. One of the industrial theories applicable in supply chain management is the Just in Time delivery system.

This system was initiated in Toyota manufacturing plants in Japan and was aimed at regulating supplies to the Toyota motor factory just in the right –small – bits and in the right time (Vrijhoef & Koskela, 2000). The aim of this approach in supply chain management was to decrease inventories and to regulate the interaction between suppliers and the production line. In a construction