Five Reasons why projects delayed in the construction phase…
Every industry faces project management challenges. Even the well managed projects encounter schedule offset and delays. I have managed IT projects for over 7 years. The cost escalation due to delays in IT projects is fairly straightforward and only linked to man-hours. For the construction industry though, the delays can have significant impact on the project feasibility. Running a Project Management SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) for the construction industry, I had an opportunity to understand the cause and the impact better.
Some of the major delays in construction process are dues to Design errors, scope changes, inappropriate or inadequate procurement and Due to complexity of the project. But considering the fact we correct these human or situational errors, the major reason for project delays remains as “lack of resources”. It may be direct or indirect planning of cost estimation of resources for specific duration.5 main reasons for lack of resources are
- Poor risk managment and Ignorance
It is very crucial to plan the construction project right and execute the plan. While implementation of the construction project at every step there exists potential risk.
For example, project risk management includes
- Risk management planning
- Risk identification
- Qualitative risk analysis
- Quantitative risk analysis
- Risk response planning
- Risk monitoring and control
Risk management is probably the most difficult aspect of project management. A project manager must be able to recognise and identify the root causes of risks and to trace these causes through the project to their consequences.
The benefits of the risk management process include identifying and analyzing risks, and improvement of construction project management processes and effective use of resources. which eventually increases the probability of resource availability as per the plan.
2. Lack of project Planning and Scheduling
The purpose of Project Management is to achieve goals and objectives through the planned expenditure of resources that meet the project’s quality, cost, time, and safety requirements. Planning serves as primary documentation for delay claim analysis and other time impact considerations.
Planning → Scheduling → Monitoring → Controlling
Through these steps the work plan is very well communicated to all the departments. Cash flows can be forecasted based on the planning and controlling and any problem could be identified before they arise. The amount of resource consumption and co-ordination requirement makes project planning inevitable in construction.
3. Poor co-ordination and communication
Design, Plan & execute is the process followed while making any project. But specially in construction Execution comes with lot more than the managing human resources. Construction involves too many heads in the process and the main 4 M’s (Manpower, Machine, Material, Money) management which makes it an uphill task.
Transparency is having clear road map and verification of the same between all departments. Wiz.
- Site execution team & planning team
- Contractor’s team & site management team
- Site billing team & Accounts team
- Civil Engineer & Design team
- Site supervision team & purchase team
The list can go on with a lot more combinations. With more visibility issues could be found proactively and execution can be carried as per plan/drawing with least hassel.
4. Delay in Material deliveries
Once the project schedule is finalized it is important to bring all the departments on the same page. On the basis of schedule, the procurement departments is well aware of construction activities ahead, they can mobilise their resources to procure material for specific activity. The flow of material procurement to supply to consumption is crucial, if there is any one steps that is done incorrectly or not done on-time, it could cause activity delay and eventually the project delay if the activity was Critical.
The material management cycle is as follows
Material need generated from site → Material ordered in store (Indent generated)→ Check for availability in store → Vendor selection from approved list of by client → Material inspection from received stock → Rejection of unacceptable stock → Material issued to concerned department.
5. Poor Supervision
Project planning, scheduling will be of little help if there is no Monitoring and controlling. The key is to act on any deviation and/or budget escalation before hand. The real-time smart supervision with proactive site update can prevent the project schedule from deviation or take care of the delay before any loss.
Some of the key influencers(Man made) to the schedule which can cause delay
- better or worse productivity than anticipated
- delivery problems
- greater insight to the actual scope of work
- subcontractor performance/availability
- change in scope of work
Such delay causes can be easily tackled, by collaborative approach. Well planned, scheduled and monitored projects can be difficult to go off track.
Significant resource consumption can be optimised by capturing information in real-time from construction site. Since such sites in India are mainly operated by man power, the first hand digitisation shall be done by Supervisors on the site.
Some of the useful resources to read more on the construction project management are listed here.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9d19/c7f0bdd01424d405ca16e005e2d96b412a5d.pdf, http://bvmengineering.ac.in/misc/docs/published-20papers/civilstruct/Civil/101002.pdf
