ISSUES IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Planning and management  The purpose of the planning and management is to make it possible to carry through the intended project in the context of finance, technique and time. To the client planning and management of the execution is only a minor part of the activities during the whole project. For the contractor, however, this is obviously of particular interest, since the major part of his work is conducted in this phase. The client  The client and his design team will first of all focus on the overall time schedule and the deviations in relation to the intended taking over of the building. Depending on the organisational model also the co-ordination and interfacing between the contractors might be of particular managerial interest to the client's representatives. On the financial side the client must elaborate a sequence of progress payments in order to have appropriate funding available at given moments during the project. In principle the client must take all planning to the desired level of detailing prior to the tender, because planning information form a central part of the documents on which the tender is based. Time  A principal programme is elaborated showing the variety of tasks and the contractors assigned to them. The schedule must indicate start and completion dates for each individual task highlighting the interdependent sequences of construction process. Critical paths are identified and milestones in the project are defined. Figure 14 - Process, functional and communicational relations between the parties - total entreprise In building projects a quite large number of different trades and typically 20 -50 contractors are involved, making it very critical to co-ordinate all activities. The industrialised building process with extremely condensed time schedules is obviously very sensitive to delays and disruptions causing subsequent overruns of time, often at the aggregated project level. The growth of refurbishment activities certainly has added an extra dimension to the difficulty of planning and management, since buildings are often occupied during the renovation process. Planning then calls for a close co-operation between the client's consultants and the contractors and perhaps also user groups. Finances  The financial planning must clarify the amount of money that has to be provided for the project to be realised. A plan of finance is established outlining all the major items. In the case of extended building periods, increases in prices must be taken into account and incorporated in the plan of finance. Administrative planning This type of planning contains: definition of relations between the client, the design team, the relevant authorities and the contractors organisation of the work implied in the detailed design, making sure all necessary drawings are available at the right time decisions on the construction management and the level of reporting to be done by the construction manager and the contractors materials procurement in case the client has decided to act as supplier employment of new personnel and equipment for the new building During the construction period the client performs inspection procedures on site and takes corrective action, if anything starts to go wrong. The detailed registration on the site is made by the works inspectors as a part of the supervision of the work, noting start and completion dates for all operations and the reasons for any kind of deviation. The registrations will normally be published in reports from weekly site meetings. For the contractors not yet on site these progress reports are vital, since they will reveal alterations in starting dates for their works. Quality management is seen as a central tool for the successful course of the building process. The prime target of quality management is clearly to ensure - and prove - that the building is produced to the specified level of quality and to the standards widely accepted in the market as good workmanship. Since quality management has been formalised not only in its controlling procedures but also as being based on rather large amounts of written documentation, other types of more practical quality management methods have now been implemented at the company level. However quality management is not only seen as a formalisation of the building process. Great emphasis has been put to the motivation of all the actors involved in the process including a focus on the necessity of having the proper qualifications for doing the job. The Contractor With the critical condensed time schedules of the industrialised building process good planning has become a crucial factor to contractors' financial results. The planning of construction sequences is important, because lost time cannot easily be regained by increasing the amount of manpower. Merely increasing the number of operators on the site is practically impossible due to the linked sequences of construction, limited space and the limited capacity of plant and tools. Thus contractors spend more effort in planning the logistics of the production process to ensure that the right amount of material, machinery and manpower is at the right place at the proper time. This requires minute preparation. An elaborate plan typically contains the following main items: all necessary information for the planning to be done main guidelines in the organisation and management time schedules selection of methods of construction and the necessary plant layout of the site temporary works financial planning preparation for the works instructions system for reporting detailed planning for the commencement of the works Normally the contractors work to two levels of detail during the planning. The first step is to prepare a pre-tender plan, which has a sufficient level of detailing for him to prepare his bid for tendering. However planning must always be taken to a level from which the job can be executed using the defined equipment and within the duration of the promised time schedule. Having obtained the contract the plan is always detailed to a further level applicable to practical construction. This detailed planning is based on the information obtained through: the contract documents including drawings, specifications, conditions etc. a visit on the site the bid additional information after the tender has closed The contract documents will be more or less the same as the tender documents, but modified in accordance to the alterations agreed during the contract negotiations. Alterations often concern changes of the time schedule for specific parts of the job and of the layout of the site. If the contractor has introduced alternatives to the original project design these are also discussed at this stage and often accepted by the client. A site visit may be important, because information relevant to the construction and not available in the tender documents must be obtained. The contractor then defines the site layout and picks up knowledge about the temporary works needed to do the job. The bid is often calculated by specialist estimators at the contractors' main offices. The information elaborated during the tender must have a format enabling the contracts manager's team to do further detailing for the eventual, actual construction. When the tender has closed and the contractor is in the process of getting the job in negotiations with the client and his representatives, it is common practice gather as much additional information as possible. Often methods chosen by competing contractors are taken into consideration for the job execution. Suppliers or producers of materials may offer uninvited materials bringing new alternatives into the project. Contacts with local subcontractors and suppliers of materials and surveys on the availability of local labour are of course also central.