Construction management - Build Time performance management

What is construction management?

To understand how to handle something, we must first identify what it is. The four main tenants of construction managementare time, budget, quality and safety. Additional elements that are also a central responsibility of construction management are regulatory compliance, supply chain management, and reporting.

This article focuses on the management of construction time; In later publications, I will discuss the other essential elements.

To manage the timely construction of any project, you must ensure that all elements are properly planned, including materials, future labor requirements, regulatory and compliance requirements and construction difficulties identified and mitigated, among many other things. I will focus on the measures of timely performance, and discuss its positive and negative aspects.

Construction time measurement strategies

There are many methods to measure construction performance, and they vary significantly in focus and emphasis:

Time stage

Periodic reports (usually monthly) on the duration taken from the start of a construction stage until the end of the stage (for example, the framework, masonry, equipment, etc.). These are averaged for each stage in all jobs where that stage of construction has been completed, in that period.

This allows comparison between several supervisors, but it is very simplistic since it assumes that all contracts must have the same duration in the same stage. It is also prone to significant ups and downs due to the low number of contracts completed at one stage within a period (any progress below the seven stages makes the statistical average doubtful). The other disadvantage of this is that at a monthly average you do not have the opportunity to solve problems, just report on them. It is a good reporting strategy for quarterly, semiannual, and annual supervisors' performance charts, and to see the overall movement average across all supervisors.

Progress markers

It is about placing a theoretical weight against tasks of specific milestones in the contract construction program and, therefore, recording the completion of these tasks over a period of time rewards the supervisor of the work. This can be reported by contract, by supervisor or by construction manager.

As a relatively common strategy, it aims to weigh different elements of the construction program and the links are rewarded accordingly. Normally, it is a numerical value associated with each milestone and, therefore, it is easy to analyze statistically to identify figures, such as the sum of the value per week and the average weekly value of the life of the contract. The disadvantage of the weighted markers approach is that it rewards progress in a small subset of the tasks and, therefore, the progress can be made in such a way that the numbers look good, however, other important works can be left languishing and the numbers will not say it. history.

Baseline markers

Establishing an ideal global expectation of the construction program (baseline) allows comparison at any point of the current forecast program with the baseline established at the beginning. Next, you can indicate if you are ahead or behind the baseline and assign a numerical value to it.

This is usually a base measure, from which other statistics are derived. The important things to consider are: 'how realistic is the baseline?', 'Does the duration of the baseline fit the complexity and size of the contract?' and 'Are delays outside the control of the construction team conforming to the baseline?' You can also see the slippage from the baseline, so you can easily identify areas of construction problems that need improvement. The disadvantage of this is that it consists of a singular number registered at a point in time against a contract, and therefore it is difficult to use to identify trends and averages.

Workdays obtained by period

This measures the progress per week compared to the contract, by measuring the predicted number of days until the end of the reporting cycle and then comparing it with the same state at the end of the reporting cycle. This gives the metric of the days of progress achieved per period, which is a measure of how much closer it is to the end of the project. It allows the complete construction program to be managed by performance, since forgetting or delaying them will eventually cause the forecast to be extended and, therefore, reduce the number of days of progress per period. The problem with this metric is that it can be negative in short periods and that the forecast of the construction program needs a level of precision, which can only be achieved with complex project management systems.

Income obtained

At the end of the day, revenues must be achieved, and a very common metric is the measure of the income achieved per period. This is an easy state to gather and concentrates supervisors on important numbers.

The disadvantage of the income is that it becomes a numbers game, which pushes the claims to different periods depending on the requirements. This is very visible to the customer when they check their house against the claim, but the roof is not lit! The opposite also occurs when a supervisor can delay a claim for one or two days to smooth out a bad month that is coming and get into important cash flow.

Current vs Goal vs. Forecast

None of the previous performance measures has included any goal settings, and there is no measure of performance compared to the objectives. The objectives are usually used for team members to set realistic expectations and manage themselves towards them; A very powerful motivator! This process of configuration of objectives can be done in any of the previous metrics (and in others), but it is a very powerful tool when comparing the objectives of the last period with the real, then it is planned for the next week creating objectives from of the forecasts (with minor adjustments agreed between the manager and the supervisor).

A powerful tool, but it requires good processes to ensure that it works correctly. The method works best when the construction team has provisional reports so that they can measure their own follow-up with the objectives set for themselves.

conclusion

I have highlighted some of the most common strategies for managing the construction time performance used, which hopefully will give you an idea of??the different methods available. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, but it is important to evaluate how to manage performance as the most important part of the homebuilder's process; the construction

In the next article, I will discuss the performance management of the provider. What metrics are available and how can they be used?

Step Engineering provides best class construction management services in Canada and the USA. If you have the same requirement contact us.

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