Useful terms used in construction planning and management

Construction planning is the specific process construction managers have for how to manage and execute a construction project, from designing the structure to preparing materials to deploying staff and subcontractors to complete various tasks.

Some useful and important things in consideration are:

Planning :

Predetermined course of action to obtain the desired project activities. It also involves the formulation of alternatives and chooses the best suitable. During planning phase, project is required to be split up into well definable work in terms of time and resources.

Scheduling:

It is the arranging of the work plan in the sequence of time.

Scoping:

Scoping is the defining the object of the project. Thus, the project must be stated in the definite end measurable terms, which include costs, schedule or quality of performance. Thus we obtain realistic and specific objective of the project during scoping.

Organizing:

Integrating the resources in the project is termed as organizing. Money, equipment, time, technology, manpower, materials are resources. Putting them together to obtain desired result in organizing.

Controlling:

Controlling is the monitoring, influencing and directing the project.

The progress of project is assessed through suitable measure; deviations are discovered and corrective measures are taken to rectify the deviation.

Following steps are involved in controlling a project:-

• Assess the progress of the project, measure quality and flow of money.

• Compare with original schedule, specification, design. Also obtain the quality of conformance.

• Take necessary action to correct if there is any deviation from the earlier plans.

Directing:

It is function of project leader to give instructions to subordinates, supervise their work and corresponds to the report when they give as feedback. Basically directing is linked with organization setup of project management team.

Staffing:

This is the process of dividing the project work and placing suitable person at the appropriate positions. Recruitment, training and their assessment are part of staffing.

Coordinating:

This is the process of interaction between different departments or functionalities in the project management group which generally follows pyramidal structure.

Estimation:

Estimation evaluates the resources in terms of cost. Planning evaluates the resources in terms of time. Adding both together as is necessary to obtain the cash flow.

Interlated with each other in all Processes