A construction project is a bustling crowd of men and machinery. It can get you a headache if you go down to the field without a proper plan for your project. Construction and project management can go wrong if you have very little or no idea of the chaotic process involved behind a construction. If even one of the processes in the project goes wrong, the whole thing has to come down before the project continues. There are steps to construction and project management including the designing, planning and scheduling the build.
Construction projects require you to be on your toes with the techniques and tools necessary for the success of the project. You need to keep the methods of management handy to oversee a construction project.
What is Construction and Project Management?
As the name suggests, the managing process of any construction project is construction project management. Construction and project management is different than managing other kinds of projects. Since construction is a mission-based job, the organization of a construction project only ends when the construction and building are complete.
Construction and project management is generally defined as the management of resources and methods through the time span of the project. Since the time the project begins until it ends, the management has to take care of the machinery and tools used in the construction process. Manual labour has to be addressed about their responsibilities and areas of work. When in the construction industry, your outlook must be broader than just cost control, time and quality. There is usually a wider array of curbs that might affect the job on the field. To eliminate such hindrances during the building process, your management must be crisp on the entry-level while you’re still planning the build. The engineering, architecture and city plans all have to be taken into consideration before the building process begins.
Construction projects are of several kinds that are made according to the sector of construction. There are two sectors in the construction industry, residential and commercial. Breaking down these two sectors, you get different kinds of construction projects.
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Residential home building and renovation
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Heavy industrial construction
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Commercial and institutional construction (schools, hospitals and shopping centres)
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Engineering constructions
There are a plethora of construction projects that require management. Construction management is a necessity for a lot of projects ranging from home building, a large bridge to engineering a dam. Every project taken over by the management needs to be looked over for safe and quality work. This mostly requires on-site management and overseeing the work of the manual labour put to work.
What are the Principles of Construction and Project Management?
Construction and project management requires skills, knowledge, and experience to take a construction project from concept design to the final build. It is thus important for project managers to follow the principles of construction and project management to ensure a successful build.
Conceiving and Initiating the Project
When a concept for a project is generated, a project manager must be sure that the project will come to a successful build that has no construction issues or anomalies. For this reason, the first thing that a project manager must have is the vigour to see through and determine if the project will be taken to the final finishing build, or will be paused even before the foundation is laid. Project managers need to do a business case study on the concept of construction. When the concept for the project is made, certain factors can be used to determine the success of the project. You need to look at the goal of your construction, cost of building and the probable timeline for the work to be done. These factors must be weighed along with the resources that you can gather for the project. If you see that the project can be completed in a certain time without hindrances of money or time, the concept can be taken further to the planning stage.
Defining and Planning the Project
Once the business case has been studied and the project seems feasible to be taken forward, its time to plan how the project proceeds. First, you must use the timeline to take a note of the milestones of the project. Which means you must know what part of the construction must be completed in what time from the whole project timing. Check for the resources for every milestone you have set for yourself and make sure that the fraction of the project is done within the budget allocated for the milestone. You must let the planned project be open to all of your team members so that everyone stays on the same track with their work. This way you can talk to the other members of the firm and sieve out the people that understand the job best.
Launching the Project
Once you are done with the determination of taking the project forward to the building procedure. You have taken notes of all the costs and the time taken. You must keep in mind the hindrances that may arise while the project is on before launching it. Whatever completion has been decided for whatever time frame must be completed. Since the project has been planned, it is time to communicate with stakeholders, customers, and team members for the launch. This is important to have workflow management and resource allocation for the project. Once the project has been launched, you’ll have to set up meetings with the team members and the stakeholders for updates through every stage.
Management of construction projects is not something that is done perfectly the first time. But the amount of energy, time and money that you spend on the project demands it to be as crisp as possible. It might help you make the most of your allocated resources if you hire a construction and project management company for your construction project.