7 Tips for planning your construction project
Ivan Bandura
Planning a construction project is a demanding task, as it involves so many different sizes and types of teams and lengthy timelines. The management of small specific tasks can become challenging to maintain when it involves subcontracted costs, bids, deadlines, and materials, not including all of the paperwork. Starting with a good foundation is critical to a successful result, so we have set out some guidelines to help you plan for a successful project.
1. Know all the details
It is essential to any successful construction project, to begin with, a solid plan. A fundamental framework considers the traditional phases of project management:
Initiation
Planning
Launch
Performance
Closure
By including incremental deliverables to your project based on the five stages, you can maintain measured control.
Project Initiation Document
Construction planning often involves a Project Initiation Document that will define teams and set parameters for resources and budget.
People: Number of workers needed, including subcontractors, such as plumbers and electricians.
Resources: Necessary materials for the design and building plans.
Budget: Total cost estimate of the project, including labor, materials, equipment, fees, and permits.
This document is crucial for outlining all the resources and teams you'll need to complete the project for stakeholders and crew. By having an accurate take on all of the details, you will predict and anticipate risks. With a strong plan, you can establish measurable successes and milestones and accomplish tasks to deadline and within budgetary constraints to ensure client satisfaction and success for your business.
Use the S.M.A.R.T. and C.L.E.A.R. processes to set definitive, specific goals for your project.
See the following definition of S.M.A.R.T. goals:
Specific: Set specific goals for your project, such as deadlines for crucial milestones.
Measurable: Agree on how you will measure success for goals. For example, is it good enough to start laying concrete by the deadline you set, or should it be entirely set by that date?
Attainable: You need to have a plan in place for how you're going to achieve these goals, and are your goals achievable? Do you have a specific plan for how you will complete each one? Are there any particular materials that could stall your project if unavailable in desired quantities on time? With project-critical aspects like these in consideration, you can make the necessary adjustments to avoid potential pitfalls.
Realistic: Be realistic about your capabilities as a construction manager. Consider realistic timeframes based on the scale of the project. For instance, will this result in problems if you promise deliverables that you've never achieved on such large-scale projects?
Timely: Layout a specific time frame in which you can realistically expect to achieve these goals.
And now let's look at C.L.E.A.R. goals:
Collaborative: Get everyone on board. Hold a meeting before the project begins with the entire team to lay out what is expected of them and identify any possible obstacles.
Limited: Limit these goals both in terms of scope and time frame to not get overwhelmed.
Emotional: Ensure that your goals will get your employees fired up and onboard.
Appreciable: Break up big goals into achievable tasks, so you don't overwhelm your workers.
Refinable: Count on being flexible because you can never predict what will happen on a job site.
Other elements to consider are:
Ensure crew is up to date on all building codes, materials, and new products being used.
Know material lead times before the job begins
Draw up the project's critical paths to completion
2. Good interaction and communication
Right from the early stages, it's crucial to build a project-wide culture to ensure a holistic approach across teams. Call a meeting with your team to set expectations, ensure you are aligned, and assign project managers to oversee specific areas. If you are a small business with one project manager, draw up a schedule of what you will be checking and when. Regular contact is critical, even if that meeting is just a brief weekly check-in or conference call. Take time to talk with every member of your crew on an individual level. Reiterate expectations and encourage questions to ensure there is no confusion over assigned work. A project is just as good as the team that facilitates it; it is vital to consider their thoughts and suggestions as a project manager. Empower them to offer new ideas. They are the specialists in their field, and by seeking their advice, the project will run more smoothly and avoid critical issues. Consider the strengths and weaknesses of your teammates and consider how you delegate roles in conjunction with experience levels and expertise. The aim is to create a team with a common goal that produces quality work on time and within budget by working with a positive, responsible, and creative approach.
Ensure communications across teams by outlining when and how often which specific team members should contact one another. As your project progresses, many aspects can change, so it's best to keep them informed of any upcoming changes or discuss any problems to maintain a good workflow. By maintaining good communication, you will avoid delays, misunderstandings, and other challenges. While emails can also be a good way of keeping in touch with the entire team, they may not be as easily accessible out in the field, and they can quickly mount up in numbers. For Construction Pros site reported that construction project managers spend an average of three hours a day reading or writing emails. Hence, it's good to consider quality communication over quantity.
3. Track your performance
You must have an accurate track of the team's performance to ensure they are meeting your parameters. By gathering data on key performance indicators (KPI's), you can accurately track objectives, performance, and quality. Successful construction managers often use KPIs to monitor the project's performance. That critical data, once evaluated, can be informative for future jobs, specifically for unsuccessful projects, as it will allow you to assess areas of issue to help you avoid problems arising in the future.
Some typical KPIs you can track include:
Project objectives: Are you on schedule and on budget?
Project performance: Is the project proceeding smoothly, or are you running into some obstacles you weren't expecting?
Quality: Sure, the crew is hitting their milestones, but is the work up to the quality you want at this stage?
4. Good documentation & project management tools
Good documentation is critical to the success of your project. It's a comprehensive part of your process. Ensure that all documentation is handled correctly, responsibly, and systematically to avoid misunderstandings. Documentation must be maintained in an organized way to avoid failed projects that could end up in legal proceedings.
It's important to consider product documentation within your construction project; all building materials should have sufficient product documentation before being used on site. When speaking to your suppliers, ensure they give you all of the necessary paperwork.
By digitizing your documentation system, you will allow other suppliers and crew to enter invoices, etc., and enable all participants to regularly see updated information about decisions, drawings, and any changes to the plan. Today, there are many web-based construction project management solutions available on the market. Interfaces that track across all areas offer a great alternative to traditional project workflow solutions. With overall visibility for the project manager and relevant information for team members, contractors can check the workflow status and their assigned tasks.
“With Yellowsack’s flexible dumpster bags, we offer two-size solutions that will suit all aspects of your construction project, from large C&D materials to smaller items of waste.”
5. Map the waste types with a waste plan
It's essential to map out the waste plan for your construction project to ensure you know all the different types of waste you are dealing with. You will then be able to include waste management in your final report, giving an accurate listing of the types of waste produced and how much of each type. You must ensure that you source separate waste into individual containers or waste bags as you progress through the project. Try to keep a detailed account to avoid extra costs and to source, separate correctly, and recycle your waste properly by delivering it to an approved local station in the immediate area. Responsible waste management will reduce any negative environmental impact from your build.
When it comes to waste suppliers, ensure they have all required permits and can deal with the capacity you need and pick up waste as agreed to reasonable timeframes; this is something Yellowsack excel in, with a proven track record for speedy dumpster bag delivery and retrieval, we handle almost all waste, with the exception of toxic materials.
With Yellowsack's flexible dumpster bags, we offer two-size solutions that will suit all aspects of your construction project, from large C&D materials to smaller items of waste. Our bags are the perfect way to source separate, while our drivers will deliver your new bags upon collection to help keep your project running smoothly.
6. Find a good supplier
For a construction project to run smoothly, the timescales of supplies are a critical element of the process. Central to finding good suppliers are previous knowledge and experience, recommendations from colleagues, and comparative information. Suppliers of materials such as crushed gravel and stone should be solution-oriented and offer documented products.
7. Close out and evaluate
Every project comes with successes and challenges. If you had a clearly defined project plan, you should have methods to track performance that you can then review to help plan the next one and ensure it runs smoothly.
Things like the time taken to complete electrics for a particular project scale, the type of recycling required, and experiences with specific suppliers and material costs will help to save you time and resources so that your next project is even more productive, efficient, and successful.
The close and evaluation of your project should be a formal process. Hold a meeting with all crew members to discuss performance and issues and ask the team to offer ideas about how you could have improved the project. Finally, create a completed project budget that you can compare to your original budget. All of this information can be drawn into your final project report, which you should share with key stakeholders
