Civil Engineering Management - Case Study Example

Civil Engineering Management Health and Safety Organizational Health and Safety protocols involves the Science of effectively anticipating, recognizing, evaluating and fully devising control measures for the impending hazards. In itself, the concept of Health and Safety is an all-encompassing strategy that involves a wide range of skills, disciplines, knowledge and analytical capacities, which necessitate implementation and coordination of all components with the intension of stretching protection to both the environment and workers (Health and Safety Executive, 2009). 1.1. Planning In the planning process of an effective way to manage an organization or company, compliance to the laws and regulations is compulsory. Therefore, a practical approach to safety and health management should come first in every process of controlling an organizational process, and the integral segments of the workplace attitudes and behaviours. In the management operations of Visionary Construction Company, there exist outstanding recognition on the core elements in the effective management health and safety to include leadership and management, trained human resource, and an environment of trusted and involved personnel. Planning must therefore ensure that such measures are established and rolled out for implementations. 1.2. Performance Under this category, there must be well-drafted policies on safety and health; employees provided with proper information regarding possible risks at their workstations, and provision of instructions on how to avoid and deal with risks. For the confirmation on the appropriateness of the policies, the management has to consult with the employees to check on the risks involved at their stations, preventive and protective measures. 1.3. Performance Assessment Assessments of the possible risks to constructors, employees, management, partners and the surrounding on the impact of the company’s operations are vital, and findings recorded. This also comes with adequate appraisal strategies that ensure accessibility by all employees to ensure total inclusion (Health and Safety Executive, 2009). Performance assessments will therefore see into it that adequate and appropriate supervision exist, everyone has access to competent safety and health advice, and there are effective organization, planning, control, and review of preventive/protective established from the risk assessments. 1.4. Performance Improvements The intertwined relationship that exists between the current Scientific Management and health and safety is relatively significant to the foundation of the present health and safety management system. According to Fredrick Taylor, there exist two distinctive aspects of the relationships (Roughton, 2002). These include the fact that scientific management practitioners identified health and safety as a vital factor, with it having very positive influence on the general productivity of workers. The second consideration has its basis on the relationship to outcomes and development of health and safety programs. Based on the projected hazards, the scientific operation management entails work simplification which is fundamental on the on the repetitive and boring tasks, new technologies, new work techniques, hazards linked to piecework processes, and faster rates of production (Health and Safety Executive, 2009). 1.5. Solutions 1.5.1. Health and Safety Culture At the Visionary Construction Company, trainings form the main solution to the prevailing hazards under any circumstance. Among the critical issues, include a better understanding of the occupational health and safety, critically investigating into the extent of a similar situation in the global aspect, defining a range of hazards, recognizing the significance of management commitments and importance of training, and conceptualizing on the roles of health and safety representative. An elaboration of the above factors is as below: 1.5.1.1. Occupational Health and Safety The management of Visionary Construction Company should ensure successful practice of occupational health and safety strategies with the focus of promoting and maintaining high levels of physical, social and mental well-being of all its workers within their respective departments; and preventing them from the adverse effects of ill health caused poor working conditions. Other aims should be to protect workers in their working areas from adverse health risks, ensuring adaptation of employees to their working environments, and subsequent adaptation of work to humans (Health and Safety Executive, 2009). 1.5.1.2. Critically Investigating into the Extent of a Similar Situation This investigative analysis involves intensified recognition of accident and disease control mechanisms, good record-keeping, up-to-date reporting mechanisms. Unchallenged identification of the true causes of hazards plays a very significant role in trying to come up with counteractive remedies. Besides the development of health and safety education programs to facilitate upgrading of the current system, the case institution can as well promote the development of occupational health services like the training of medical experts to be in good positions to recognize work related hazards in the earliest stages possible. 1.5.1.3. Defining a Range of Hazards Although hazards range from one industry or organization to another, some of the well-defined occupational diseases include lead poisoning caused by lead, silicosis caused by silica, noise-induced hearing loss due to impairing noise. Additionally, some of the potentially crippling health predicaments linked to the poor working conditions includes allergies, heart disease, stress-related disorders, musculoskeletal disorders, and reproductive complications. It should be clear to the organizational management that some types of these occupational diseases do develop varied effects on workers, with the number of work-related health complications being much high within institutions that do not effectively practice preventive measures. This step is therefore important in identifying the possible hazards within the case organization to come up with the most appropriate measures for their corrections or to solve them comprehensively (Roughton, 2002). 1.5.1.4. Recognizing the Significance of Management Commitments In all situations, a successful health and safety programme calls for a well-established management commitment and work participation that will ensure proper implementation of the programme’s stipulations (Roughton, 2002). In this regard, an effective management covers all work-related hazards that are specific to the organization based on its unique working conditions, and the governmental standards. Therefore, Visionary Construction Company must integrate all levels into its health and safety management programmes, with effective communication strategies between the management and those involved at the worksites. As a summary under this, the Visionary Construction Company for its successful workplace safety and health strategies should reconsider effectively established management commitment and strong workers’ participation in the whole process of ensuring health and safety. An additional to this, the general management both should be well informed on how effective management of health and safety issues collectively address work-related vulnerabilities to both individuals covered by the government-set standards and communication trends instituted by workers. 1.5.1.5. Importance of Training In all spheres of management, effective training of employees together with the general management team plays a very vital role in the in keeping everyone involved at breast with the latest and most efficient ways to prevent and deal with prevailing hazards. Therefore, comprehensively conducted training programmes for all employees of Visionary Construction Company will ensure that all workers are in a better position to correctly recognize early symptoms/signs of all potential occupational illnesses prior to their development. Such trained workers will equally be able to assess their works environments and communicate with the management to make recommended changes to conditions that are likely to cause danger before such conditions develop. 1.5.1.6. Conceptualizing on the Roles of Health and Safety Representative The role of health and safety management should be emphasized in the organization based on its significances in ensuring the well-being of all workers and promoting high productivity as necessary. For this reason, Visionary Construction Company should come up with a highly professional health and safety representative who will be charged with the responsibility of working proactively to guard workers from being exposed to the possible occupational vulnerabilities. In order to do these, such personnel will be required to be at par with the most medically recommended techniques of solving cases of hazards within the company, having understood them well. They should also work in collaboration with the company’s union and management to determine and control vulnerabilities; and, sharing basic information with the supervisors and the management in the course of working collectively towards healthy and safe workplace. 1.5.2. Stakeholder Involvement The health and safety committee of stakeholders at the Visionary Construction Company is ideally interested in addressing possible vulnerabilities caused by the utilization of scientific management in responding to accident investigations. Stakeholders can as well establish record-keeping equipment for health and safety, diagnostic data, and workforce safety for high productivity. Human factors and environmental issues also fall within the stakeholders’ core interests. 1.5.3. Effective Audit Auditing exercises in health and safety within Visionary Construction Company mainly address the issue of compliance to the governmental and medical recommendations concerning workers and environmental safety. In this sense, auditing covers organizational, technical, human factors, and environmental issues. Out of the observations made and recommendations drawn, eyes can be focused on the need to continuous improvements on the observed situations. 1.5.4. Evidence of Continuous improvement Continuous innovations and inventions obviously work towards the benefits of enhancing current drawbacks witnessed in ensuring safety and stable health for works in different organizations. Based on the listed solutions above, Visionary Construction Company will further make its operations more effective, successful and less life risking. 2. Civil Engineering Project Life Cycle In Civil Engineering, Project Life Cycle involves a whole process that entails planning for the project to the time that it has undergone full approval and awarded certificate of successful completion in accordance to the user requirements, expected standards and project plan. An effective implementation of a Project Life Cycle management in Civil Engineering heavily depends on collaborative information platforms and visual communication techniques, all of which make management and planning more vivid. Although some variations exist on how a project is approached and managed, the diverse attributes of projects and their stages offer virtually different interpretations. Therefore, a proposal that can only the available life cycle stages of Conceptualization, planning, testing, implementing and closure of the entire project should take effect on any of the projects. Thus, Civil Engineering projects have to involve different phases as illustrated below. The Life Cycle of a Civil Engineering Project As illustrated in the diagram above, every section serves its defined roles. For instance, the planning phase involves the incorporation of conception designs and preliminary evaluations; Design phase involving initial designing and designing details; Utilization phase involving the intended user’s acceptance, levels of comfort and usability; while Decommissioning involving the demolition and recycling of the entire product. 2.1. Project Management Project management takes into account the sequential process of first identifying and structuring various requirements that may seem necessary during the whole undertaking. Under the guidelines drawn from the list of requirements, the subsequent step involves choosing the most suitable a product. Successful completion of a project also depends so much on the mode and efficiency with which information is communicated from one point to another. In most instances, such information have to be in relation to different phases which include planning stage, designing stage, commissioning, construction, utilization, maintenance and decommissioning (Bonnal, Lacoste, & Gourd, 2002). In this situation, information flow can be integrated into a VP-based collaboration and communication platform of information. Based on the above drawing, it can be concluded the project management is actually a process has its fundamentals on the temporal desire to help in achieving a unique desire as designed in the planning stage. Although the process of breaking down the entire process of a project life cycle can facilitate an achievement of an effective and successful result, a number of challenges witnessed in the due process. These can result from the main constraints of time allocation, scope set, project budget, and the resulting quality of work. Additional reasons for failures include such reasons as the optimization of the allocated resources, which may integrate or necessitate the achievement of some pre-defined project scopes (Ameri & Dutta, 2004). 2.2. Technical Processes The most technical processes in a project’s life cycle constitute the initial phases, which also define the success of the same projects. Miscalculations during the planning stage, for instance, has a very major impact on the way a project is likely to come to its conclusion or to result into a project’s total failure prior to its completion stage. Also involved in the technical processes are decisions crucial in the definition of the desire goals of projects, based on the also ready set targets, although the available budget may be a constraint to the whole course. This therefore means that all that decision will be made will influence the turning point of the project either for its success or failure. Some of the projects more so within the Civil Engineering are conceptually technical. This also means that all processes involved have to be equally technical to ensure that nothing remains detrimental in the process of attaining the desired goals (Bonnal, Lacoste, & Gourd, 2002). 2.3. Commercial Matters The commercial issues within any projects call for the consistent process of identifying, acting, reviewing and making the most appropriate report out of the available options. In this situation, project managers and stakeholders remain charged with the responsibilities of steering every progress of a project. This element actually involves a proper translation of learning, agreements and insights into progressive actions aimed at benefiting the whole project. Therefore, all information managed at this stage has to be complete, coherent, consistent, and effective to the intended roles of the projects (An, 2003, pp. 70-72). Commercial issues can also be looked at from different angles because of the varied perceptions of people who may be to for distinct ideas and approaches in tackling prevailing drawbacks in any of their projects at hand. Therefore, the key aspects here helps in creating uniformity in approached the project management among different people, and to ensure collaboration (Ameri & Dutta, 2004). 2.4. Stakeholders Involved The stakeholders’ involvement or engagement in a project broadly depends on the full commitments of the committee in the involvements and open communications. By ensuring that these simple rules and strategies are taken into account, the project is likely to benefit to benefit profoundly through improved community confidence on the project; establishment of user-friendly products or services; and to some extent, a reduced cost of operation (An, 2003, pp. 70-72). Based on similar strategies, numerous projects have enjoyed enhanced access to upcoming issues, prevention of negative effluents, agitated organizational success, better communication strategies, narrowing down of the existing cultural gaps, nurturing good cultural practices recommended for advancements, and defining simple solutions to possible conflicts within throughout the project’s life. 2.5. NEC3 Procurement and Contract Strategy From a general point of view, NEC facilitates the modern day cluster of contracts that aid full implementation of effective project management practices and principles, as coupled with some defined legal regulations in every aspect. As a fundamental tool in the construction strategies, NEC has gained, its success form the easy of adoption by its intended users, who have continued to express their desired cultural transition. From NEC, to NEC2 and now NEC3, time has elapsed and the UK currently fully recognizes and appreciates the effective use of NEC3. Different for the NEC, NEC3 actually forms the resulting feedback as generated by the industries for years because of the historical turnovers of successful application of NEC. As such, constructors make good use of NEC as a formal standard contract with the characteristics of its application of its stimulation of effective management of relationships that exists between distinct participants and amount of work covered in the contract. The second instance is its applicability within various commercial conditions for different tanks in various regions; and, thirdly its attained simplicity and clarity (An, 2003, pp. 70-72). An example of a case is as illustrated in the table below: NEC Designation Description Abbreviations NEC3 Construction and Engineering Construct This agreement applies for the appointment of a contractor for construction and engineering tasks, taking into account all stages of design accountability. ECC NEC3 Construction and Engineering Sub-Construct This agreement forms a substitute to the to the above ECC since it is applied with agreements that never calls complicated management processes, but include simplicity in the working with limited risks. ECSC Based on the simplified table above, one can draw some relations between the contractual links for prime contracting as may correctly apply in the normal agreements. However, clarifying distinctions can be derived from the use of prime contracting in the UK from that of the traditional D&B. It is important to note that both cases of construction management and contracting managements focus their attention to the full implementation of NEC3, even though some similarity aspects to the traditional contracts are identifiable. Some situations also depict that most of the bi-party agreements provide beneficial grounds by the NEC3 for the intended purpose of mutually collaborating several projects into a single project, initiating the whole contract to be an international one, effectively working out any technicalities involved in the agreement compositions and attaining expectations in the supply chain. An illustration of this in a project can be as shown below. 2.6. Form of Contract for Engaging the Stakeholders For a project’s success, formal form of engaging Stakeholders into an agreement is significant for the purpose of its success. Hence, a strategic approach to the whole concept of Stakeholders’ engagement helps in building better and continuous relations that have the benefits of realizing the project’s initiatives. Prior to any agreements, a critical analysis of the Stakeholders’ team should be ensured in the operations and planning phases of the project (Ameri & Dutta, 2004). The strategic principles in the engagement initiative have to be dependent on well-established principles of project’s significance, responsiveness, and completeness. Additional to the strategic mandates, the stakeholders must embrace the organization’s operational principles that comprehensively entail factors such as proper communication strategies between various personnel involved in the project, high level of transparency involved in the nature of information transmission and management, working collaboratively, and embracing inclusiveness while carrying out the dedicated duties of the stakeholders. Another very significant factor relates to ensuring high integrity levels (An, 2003, pp. 70-72). More emphasis dwells on the significance of proper communication which also for a very integral part of proper collaboration between stakeholders and other members of an organization. Complete communication also ensures proper and mutual links between different project coordinators, groups, departments, and phases. BIBLIOGRAPHY Ameri, F., & Dutta, D., 2004. The Complete Life Cycle of Product Management Needs Components and Concepts. An, X. H., 2003. Management Life Cycle in Construction Project based on Information Technology. Metropolitan Informatization and Intellectual Development, (4), 70-72. Bonnal, P., Lacoste, G. & Gourd, D., 2002. The Technical Projects’ Life Cycle. Journal for Managing Projects, 33(1) Health and Safety Executive, 2009. Safety and Health Regulations within the Great Britain Roughton, J., 2002. Developing an Effective Safety Culture: A Leadership Approach (1st Ed.). 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