Civil Engineering Management Portfolio - Essay Example

CIVIL ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT PORTFOLIO Introduction The construction industry is a paradox. It is the largest industry in terms of percentage of gross national product, and yet it is mostly comprised of small firms, as the vast majority of participants in this industry are small businesses. It has many characteristics common to both manufacturing and service industries. While it produces tangible, physical products, like services it does not accumulate significant amounts of capital. It is highly fragmented and sometimes divisive, and yet in times that require it, such as in response to reconstruction after a calamity or war, the industry is capable to mobilise very quickly. And while it is highly custom-oriented, it is also always in search of unique creations and better methods (Barrie, 1992 p. 6). The management of a construction project is always a challenge; there is nothing that is routine, all projects are to an extent different from all others. It involves various facets of operations, requiring a multi-dimensional approach. In this particular study, the example project (based on an actual project, but names, dates and places were changed for confidentiality) chosen is a 150,000 square-foot warehouse that will provide storage for grocery and non-food items. It is being built for a theoretical firm called Easyway Food Company. Although it is mainly equipped with pallet racks for storage of items handled by forklift trucks, it also is planned to be fitted with flow racks that allow individual items to be packed in assortments for distribution to retail stores. The Operating Division set the occupancy date to coincide with the anticipated need for the new facilities, such that Easyway’s operations expansion will be readily supported by the storage facilities to be constructed. Significant delays are thus not tolerable. Health Safety and Environmental Management The importance for devoting attention to ensure worker (and public) health and safety in most business endeavors is easily overlooked, because they do not impact normally in the revenue and cost equation of the business. Certainly, if things go smoothly in the construction project, then health and safety issues may as well have been ignored. Indifference to this area, however, can have grave consequences when contingencies take place; it is then, when a person’s health or life is involved, that the firm suffers huge costs in indemnities and, most likely, lawsuits. The construction industry is an industry replete with health hazards and dangerous situations. An early study conducted in the United States, for example, while construction workers comprise only about 6 percent of the total work force, they incur at least 12 percent of all occupational injuries and work-related illnesses, and 19 percent of all work-related fatalities, costing the government, employers, and workers’ families between USD 5 and 10 billion annually (Levitt, 1975). In 1996, the Construction (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations was promulgated, to address the issues of health and safety in the construction industry, in particular “in relation to construction work carried out by a person at work” (section 3 paragraph 1). The provisions spell out the duties of the employer of construction workers, the person in control of workers involved in construction, and the construction employee himself, in ensuring the observance of health and safety measures. On the two pages following are forms designed for monitoring a construction project, to ensure compliance with health and safety standards and requirements. They include checklists of items that workers and their supervisors are obliged to observe. These particular checklists, require to be accomplished by the area supervisor, deal with workers’ use of personal protective equipment. Quality Management System Together with concern for safety is concern for compliance with quality standards. Long after the project has been completed, the construction firm, its architects and engineers are still responsible for the strength and durability of the structure or facility, and the appropriateness of the design to the purpose for which it was intended. The employment of substandard materials or failure to detect what should have been a noticeable flaw in the design may result to criminal negligence and thus liability on their part. Quality management requires periodic and detailed inspection of the progress of the work, since after the work is accomplished it is very difficult to determine from the external appearance if the construction works were done properly. There are three aspects of quality management: Quality Engineering, Quality Control and Quality Assurance. The first describes the procedures necessary to ensure that the engineering and design for a structure proceed according to recommended and mandatory criteria by the government, professional and trade associations, and building authorities. The second, Quality Control, sets specific standards for construction performance, measuring variances from the standards, correcting and controlling these variances, and planning for improvements in the standards themselves. Finally, Quality Assurance is understood to be a broader, all-encompassing term for applying standards and procedures to ensure that the product meets or exceeds desired results. It refers to the totality of quality-ensuring processes, from the design phase to the execution to the deployment or commissioning, until the final project is turned over to the client. While adherence to standards of quality is necessary, it must, however, be applied with an eye towards economy, otherwise the cost may be prohibitive. Quality monitoring tables Technical Management Technical management would refer to that aspect of project management that ensures that design specifications are met. Technological constraints are defined for constructions projects to ensure both quality and safety. Aside from those aspects already mentioned, technical or technological management includes the observance of resource constraints, and the descriptions and limitations of activities. The technical management team should be comprised, necessarily, of the various skilled construction supervisors, engineers and architects involved in the design and construction, but more importantly the lead designer, the construction manager, and the owner himself or his duly authorized representative. Construction project management is prone to uncertainties due to the complexities and large number of activities involved, leading to many significant losses. Several costly technical problems include faulty planning, inadequate contractor experience, problems with subcontractors, shortage of specified material, non-availability of and failures in equipment, lack of effective communication between parties, and mistakes during construction stage (Sambsivan and Wen Soon, 2006 pp. 517-26). There also exists lack of discipline in controlling design changes, diverse views on the perceived objectives and poor reactivity to sudden changes in the project environment (Hameri, 1997 pp 151-7), which are all sources of extra cost to the project management. “Some considerations on construction project management at the building site need to be emphasized, such as the high degree of current uncertainty about the construction procees, the predominance of excessively informal decisions and the exaggerated over-emphasis given by project managers to controlling time and costs.” (Mota, 2008) Technical plans for design and implementation Project Management Project management deals with the overall orchestration of the various elements of the undertaking – manpower, machinery, money, and materials – in a coordinated manner so as to bring the undertaking to a successful conclusion, within the constraints of time and resources. There are three general project stages: planning and definition, design, and procurement and construction. In planning and definition, broad project characteristics are established, including location, performance criteria, configuration, layout, size, equipment, services and other requirements specified by the owner. Planning goes as far as conceptualization but stops short of preparing the actual detailed design, even though much architectural and engineering work is involved. The owner has a substantial input at this stage, because it is largely upon his needs and constraints that the design shall be based. The second stage is the design stage. At this point in the project, the architectural and engineering design is worked out. It is completed upon the preparation of the final working drawings and specifications for the total construction program. Actually, this design stage overlaps with the final stage, the procurement and construction stage, because some segments of the project will have been completed on design and thus would be beginning construction even while the rest of the design is being worked out. Staggered implementation is helpful in efficiently scheduling skilled manpower and machineries that may be needed in various segments of the project. Completion of the less critical phases could also lead to adjustments in the design of the later, more complicated, segments (Clough et al., 2000 p. 3). Below are the Gantt chart and critical path schedules for the sample project. Operations Management Operations management has reference to the organizational relationship between the home office, the project team, and the contractors and sub-contractors, such that the necessary logistical requirements are provided at the time they are needed. The home office or mother organization, usually designed on a functional basis, is capable of addressing several projects at the same time. The timely sourcing effective scheduling and deployment of common company resources, such as skilled manpower, materials, machinery and money, will ensure a smooth flow of operations among the different projects. On the page following are two organizational charts. The first shows the general interrelationships existing in the project or site management team, among the owner or project manager, the construction manager (representing the home office), the architect, and the field construction manager. These people deal directly with each other and the common aim is the accomplishment of a single project. Coordination is direct and expeditious, in effect foregoing the trappings of a large firm. The second chart shows the functional departments in the home office or the mother-organization. In this set-up, the departments are organized according to the function they perform across the several projects. The functional organization is useful since the construction manager, architects and engineers, all deal commonly with several projects at a time and provide an integrated approach to the firm by way of optimizing their portfolio of projects – that is, maximizing possible returns while minimizing risk and cost. Financial and Commercial Systems The firm operates under constraints of time and resources, limitations which the projects must work within if the business is to be viable. Various aspects of the financial and/or commercial systems are the budgeting process, procurement procedure, the financing, and the accounting function. The expenditures associated with the various stages and segments of a project may be difficult to monitor, and it is often the case that the project has gone over-budget because of a lack of system of monitoring, particularly money matters. Extreme rigidity is not desirable, because there will be times when, due to miscalculations or a sudden increase in prices, the allocated funds for that segment or stage will be insufficient, and so a quick decision should be capable of being made to remedy the situation and assure continuous construction. On the pages following are diagrams showing two steps in the financial management of a project. The first is a preliminary cost estimate for the work items (first document). The second document is a preliminary cost estimate for the administrative and general allocations with respect to the project. This is followed by the cash-flow schedule prepared by the firm and abided in by the project team. The preliminary cost estimates are included in the planning stages of the project and provide figures that should represent the upper limit of allowable costs. As the project progresses, however, there is a need to conduct periodic inspection and summarizing of figures to compare with the maximum limit. The third form is one such monitoring report that tracks project phases. Some columns in the cashflow report deals with how much of the project has been completed, and other columns deal with disbursements and the cumulative sum thus far in the project. Human Resources Management Probably the most difficult aspect of any manager’s task, whether within the construction industry or without, is the proper development and utilization of human resources. An operation’s humanware is easily its most valuable resource, and yet is easily overlooked during both the planning and implementation stages. The difficulty lies in the fact that it is not a simple “resource” such as supplies, machinery or equipment. People are the movant force in a project as with any undertaking. In project management, the necessary personnel with the required qualifications and capabilities should be enlisted, trained, and thereafter properly motivated to achieve the project’s goal. One critical aspect of human resources management for construction projects is the need to address industrial relations issues. All projects are time-limited, and thus the job is necessarily temporary in nature. But when a home office maintains operations in such a way that there is a steady stream of projects, so when one project ends there is another beginning, then there is the critical decision of which personnel to employ on a regular basis and which to maintain on contractual basis. There are legal implications for both, and labour problems can often be the most contentious and the most costly of unnecessary problems. Organized labour refers to the unionized workforce, which is especially protected by labour laws. Building-trades unions are empowered by law to negotiate in the name of their bargaining unit for higher wages, shorter hours, improved working conditions, job security, and the right to represent the work force (Barrie et al, 1992 p. 431). Construction firms have the right to decide whether they will operate as an open or a union shop; usually, open shop firms engage primarily in commercial/industrial work and are generally smaller than union-shop firms. Conclusion When a construction project is completed, the construction firm’s responsibility and accountability do not immediately terminate. Under the traditional fixed-price general-contractor method, the construction manager is held to have liability for actions under his control, insofar as he receives a fixed fee to perform certain professional services for the client. Under the Professional Construction Management (PCM) concept, however, the manager should not be assigned liability or risk for actions that are clearly outside his control (Mawdesley 1997, p. 481). A construction manager is not the same as a general contractor. The first acts on a professional capacity, the latter as a businessman and thus assumes greater risk and liability than the former. This becomes an important consideration since construction work is replete with all manner of contingencies. It is often the case that changes are made to the contract affecting the site, materials, design, and so forth, to address problems encountered during the construction phase. When communication channels are not clearly drawn, then there will be the inevitable claims and dispute resolution towards the end of the project, or at some time thereafter when the project is deemed to be flawed or has encountered failure or materials or design. Thus the documentation process, which creates a history of the construction project, is critical to form the basis of later evidentiary sources. In the pages following are diagrams outlining the system of documentation and information gathering and dissemination which is to be followed in the example project. The first is a flowchart of the project control system, showing the data flow and interrelationships among the system elements, what information to be documented and disseminated, and to which entities they should be disseminated. The table below that is a document distribution list that delineates the reports’s recipients. References Barrie, D.S. and Paulson, B.C. (1992) Professional Construction Management, Third Edition, McGraw-Hill, New York Clough R.H., Sears G.A., and Sears S. K. (2000), Construction Project Management, Fourth Edition, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY p. 3. Gould, F.E. (1997), Managing the Construction Process: Estimating, Scheduling, and Project Control, Prentice-Hall, London, pp. 212, 271 Hameri Ari-Pekka. (1997), “Project management in a long-term and global one-of-a-kind project”. Int J Project Manage 1997;15(3):151–7. Levitt, R.E. (1975) The Effect of Top Management on Safety in Construction, Technical Report No. 196, Stanford University, Dept. of Civil Engineering, The Construction Institute, Stanford, Calif., July 1975, pp. 8-9. Mawdesley M., Askew W., and O’Reilly M (1997), Planning and Controlling Construction Projects, Addison Wesley Longman Ltd., Essex, England. Mota, C.M., De Almeida, A.T. and Alencar, L.H. (2008), “A multiple criteria decision model for assigning priorities to activities in project management,” International Journal of Project Management, as seen on www.sciencedirect.com . Retrieved on January 20, 2009. Sambasivan M and Wen Soon Y. (2006) “Causes and effects of delays in Malaysian construction industry”, Int J Project Manage 2006; 25 (5): 517-26 Shaufelberger, J. E. and Holm, L. (2002) Management of Construction Projects: A Constructor’s Perspective, Prentice-Hall, London pp. 228-229. Read More