PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Project Management



Table of Content

Introduction3

Task 14

Project Event4

The Construction Planning Process4

Tender preparation4

Construction planning5

Processes5

Task 26

Task 38

References9

Project Management

Introduction

The construction industry continues to be the industry in the majority of countries with the highest indices of accidents leading to deaths and temporary or permanent disabilities. Governments in developed countries attempt to address this by implementing legislation which punishes infracting companies or persons, by the application of fines and even prison sentences. A complementary approach is to exhort the construction industry to improve its safety record.

In developing countries, appropriate legislation quite often exists but it is often not applied in the case of infraction of laws, probably because construction workers are often migrant, low-paid, are not afforded union-protection and are held in low esteem by the society in which they live. Another factor which influences attitudes to safety and health is cost: a worker from a developing country who earns £100 an hour and who dies in an accident at age 25 would be assessed for future loss of future earnings of£80.000, a UK worker at least 20 times that amount.

At the same time, in the corporate world, in the author's experience issues of safety and health are rarely really seriously addressed by owners, engineers and contractors during the construction planning and execution processes. The general approach seems to be top-down where head-office inspectors visit and monitor sites or provide guidelines. A more suitable approach would be the bottom-up one where construction site managers automatically implement safety and health planning in their day-to-day activities (Noor, 2000, 37).

Task 1

Project Event

In the following the construction planning processes will be examined and the application of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) processes and areas of knowledge, suitably adapted to include issues of safety, health and environment and social issues, will be described. The application of PMBOK processes would include applying risk management techniques to the analysis of safety and health and to do this it would be necessary to develop registers of indicators which would alert management to the need for risk analysis. A project Plan of Action or Business Plan including the above processes would assist Safety and Health officials and others in evaluating a contractor's approach to safety and health matters.

The Construction Planning Process

Once an owner has decided to go ahead with a construction project, after carrying out feasibility studies, he instructs his representative to prepare tender documents. These, among other things, may include specifications which give guidance to the tendering contractors on the quality of the finished product expected from the contractor eventually chosen to carry out the project. Sometimes the Bill of Quantities includes items to be priced dealing with environment or health and safety matters: the contractor may be required to establish on site a first-aid station, for example.

Tender preparation

During the tender preparation process contractors usually focus on planning and scheduling (or programming) to achieve a competitive price, given that contract awards are still frequently based on lowest-price criteria. The contractor will usually examine the specifications with care to ...