Construction Project Management

Project Planning

1.) Identify the need as clearly as possible.

2.) Determine a budget and completion date.
3.) Bring together a team that can design and build the facility.
4.) Monitor the process throughout the project’s schedule.

Successive participants in the process– designers, contractors, specialty contractors, material

suppliers–all plan, often with much greater detail but with limited scope, in order to execute their
part of the project.

The product of the plan is often a schedule, which demonstrates its utility through the numerous
ways in which it is applied.

CPM Procedure

- Project managers work within an extremely complex and shifting time frame, and they
need a management tool that will enable them to manipulate large numbers of job
activities and complicated sequential relationships in a simple and understandable
fashion.

Critical Path Method

- CPM applies equally well to all construction work, large and small, intricate and
straightforward. It is just such an expedient and constitutes the basis for the ensuing
treatment of project time control.
- The management techniques of CPM are based on a graphical project model called a
network. This network presents in diagrammatic form those job activities that must be
carried out and their mutual time dependencies. It serves as a basis for the calculation of
work schedules and provides a mechanism for controlling project time as the work
progresses.

CPM is a three‐phase procedure consisting of:

1.) Planning Phase – involves the determination of what must be done, how it is to be
performed, and the sequential order in which it will be carried out.
- The process of devising of workable scheme of operations that, when put into
action, will accomplish an established objective.
- It is the most time-consuming and difficult aspect of the job management system.
- CPM Planning involves a depth and thoroughness of study that gives the
construction team an invaluable understanding and appreciation of job
requirements.
- Construction planning, as well as scheduling, must be done by people who are
experienced in and thoroughly familiar with the type of fieldwork involved.
- The project program must be viewed as a dynamic device that is continuously
modified to reflect the progressively more precise thinking of the field
management team.

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Construction planning may be said to consist of five steps:

a.) A determination of the general approach to the project.
b.) Breakdown of the project into job steps or “activities” that must be performed.
c.) Ascertainment of the sequential relationships among these activities.
d.) Graphic presentation of this planning information in the form of a network.
e.) Endorsement by the project team.
2.) Scheduling – determines calendar dates for the start and completion of project
components.
3.) Time monitoring – the process of comparing actual job progress with the programmed
schedule.
Job Activities
- The segment into which a project is subdivided for planning purposes are called
activities.
- An activity is a single continuous work step that has a recognizable beginning and end,
and requires time for its accomplishment.
- The activities used may represent relatively large segments of a project or may be
limited to small steps.
- Trial and error together with experience are the best guides regarding the level of detail
needed.
- Too little detail will limit planning and control effectiveness.
- Too much will inundate the project manager with voluminous data that tend to obscure
the significant factors and needlessly increase the cost of the management system.
- Not only is network detail a function of the individual project; it is also highly variable
depending on who will be using the information.
Guidelines to identify activities:
1.) By area of responsibility, where work items done by the general contractor and each of
its subcontractors are separated.
2.) By category of work as distinguished by craft or crew requirements.
3.) By category of work as distinguished by equipment requirements.
4.) By category of work as distinguished by materials such as concrete, timber, or steel.
5.) By distinct structural elements such as footings, walls, beams, columns, or slabs.
6.) By location on the project when different times or different crews will be involved.
7.) With regard to the owner’s breakdown of the work for bidding or payment purposes.
8.) With regard to the contractor’s breakdown for estimating and cost accounting purposes.
Job Logic
- Job logic refers to the determined order in which the activities are to be accomplished in
the field.
- The start of some activities obviously depends on the completion of others.
- Much job logic follows from well-established work sequences that are usual and
standard in the trade.

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- There is always more than one general approach, and no unique order of procedure
exists.
- It is the planner’s responsibility to winnow the workable choices and select the most
suitable alternatives.
- CPM planning method is a versatile and powerful planning tool that is of great value in
the time evaluation of alternative construction procedures.
- Showing the job activities and their order of sequence (logic) in pictorial form produces
the project network, which is a graphical display of the proposed job plan.
- In general, job logic is not developed to any extent ahead of the network. Rather, job
logic evolves in a natural fashion as the job is discussed and the network diagram
progresses.
Restraints
- To be realistic, a job plan must reflect the practical restraints or limitations of one sort or
another that apply to most job activities. Such restraints stem from a number of practical
considerations.
- The restrictions of job logic itself might be called physical restraints.
- Resource Restraints: (1)Material Restraints (Ex. Shop Drawings, Steel Fabrication,
Delivery); (2) Equipment Restraints; (3) Labor Restraints; (4) Safety Restraints
- Failure to consider such restraints can be disastrous to an otherwise adequate job plan.
- Some restraints are shown as time-consuming activities.
- Restraints are also shown in the form of dependencies between activities.
Planning Methodology:
1.) Beginning-to-End Planning
- Projects are visualized in the order in which they will be built. Therefore, it is
natural to start with mobilization and proceed step-by-step through the project to
final inspection.
- Some projects are so complex that it is difficult to visualize the best way to
sequence the construction operations.
- Team members may not agree on the level of detail required.
- There is a tendency to use greater detail in the earlier stages of the job and to
begin to generalize in the later stages.
2.) Top-Down Planning
- Top-down planning starts with an examination of the project from an over-all
perspective.
- Top-down planning is often accomplished using a project outline called a work
breakdown structure (WBS), which can be made manually or with the use of a
computer.
- WBS has a number of other applications to facilitating the planning process, such
as basis of a hierarchy of reports and bar charts and cost reporting.
- When the WBS is fairly complete, the arrangement of the activities and their
logical dependencies constitute the next step.
Precedence Notation

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- The convention first used depicted activities as connected arrows separated by

circles or nodes. This method, known as arrow notation or activity on arrow
(AOA) notation, has largely been phased out with the growth in popularity of the
more flexible precedence notation or activity on node (AON), where activities
are depicted by boxes and linked together with arrows.
- In drawing a precedence network, each time-consuming activity is portrayed by a
rectangular box.
- The dependencies between activities are indicated by dependency or sequence
lines connecting one activity to another.
- The identity of the activity and a considerable amount of other information
pertaining to it are entered into this rectangular box.
Precedence Diagram
- The preparation of a realistic precedence diagram requires time, effort, and
experience with the type of construction involved.
- The only consideration at this stage is to establish a complete and accurate
picture of activity dependencies and interrelationships.
- Restraints that can be recognized at this point should be included.
- Time durations of the individual activities are not of concern during the planning
stage.
- It is assumed that the labor and equipment availability is sufficient to cover
demands.
- Each activity in the network must be preceded either by the start of the project or
by the completion of a previous activity.
- Each path through the network must be continuous with no gaps, discontinuous,
or dangling (detached or dead-end) activities.
- Activity numbers are used for the purpose of easy and convenient activity
identification.
- Each activity should have a unique numerical designation.
- Leaving gaps in the activity number is desirable so that numbers are available for
subsequent refinements and revisions.

Network Format
- A horizontal diagram format has become standard in the construction industry.
The general synthesis of a network is from start to finish, from project beginning
on the left to project completion on the right.
- Length of the lines and arrowheads have no significance.

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- Dependency lines that go backward from one activity to another should not be
used and are not possible with most computer programs.
- Crossovers occur when one dependency line must cross over another to satisfy
job logic. Careful layout will minimize the number of crossovers.
Lag Relationships
- A given activity cannot start until all of those activities immediately preceding it
have been l completed.
- There are cases, however, where they may be a delay between the completion
of one activity and the start of a following activity, or there is a need to show that
one activity will overlap another in some fashion.
Value of Precedence Network
- Preparing the network has forced the job planners to think the job through
completely from start to finish.
- The field supervisory team now possesses a depth of knowledge about the
project that can be obtained only through such a disciplined process of detailed
job analysis.
- The job plan, in the form of a precedence diagram, is comprehensive, detailed,
and in a form that is easy to communicate to others.
- The network diagram is an expedient medium for communication between field
and office forces.
- The diagram makes job coordination with material dealers, subcontractors,
owners, and architect‐engineers a much easier matter.
Network Interfaces
- Often, different portions of the same project are planned separately from one
another.
- The term interface refers to the dependency between activities of two different
networks.
- This dependency can be indicated on the networks by dashed sequence lines
between the affected activities.

Master Network

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- On the heavy civil example project, a master planning network would be

prepared that encompassed and included every subproject.
- The master job plan concerns itself essentially with the big picture, the broad
aspects of the major job segments and how they relate to each other.
Subnetwork
- The detailed planning of an extensive construction contract such as the heavy
civil example project is accomplished primarily through the medium of many
subnetworks, with their interdependencies indicated by appropriate interfaces.

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