Par Youness MAACHI IDRISSI
Ing ENSMR / Ms
Construction
Ing ENSMR / Ms
Construction
The scheduling in
construction is a very challenging topic, indeed in
construction we identify the project completion date as a limestone which is
very sensitive because we are saving on cost before it and losing money for every single day of delayed delivering of the project within perfect
completion.
With the aim to
deliver a project just in time, the company that has won the contract must
perform a successful planning and this cannot be done without a well
understanding of the scope in every details. A first draft of the schedule is
held including just the biggest components of the project, we call that a level
one of scheduling then once planners agreed with other disciplines
(construction team, engineers, procurement department, quality people, etc.) about this
level we can go forward through the next level. This practice allows to
determine the structure of the whole project in term of the progress and then
we have a strategy for managing the operations of each task in details while we
eye up many others indicators as the resources (labour force, machinery, equipments, raw
materials and especially managing the time). In order to catch up with this
high level of operations scheduling and after be done with the project
structure, the next step is to elaborate the WBS (Work Breakdown Structure).
Once
we split up the project into a significant number of operations and after
defining the links over all these tasks in term of priority, shared resources,
and the optimal coordination. At this level of organization we can definitely
see clearly through operational activities with a highest possible efficiency.
Indeed, every aspects will be well managed and balanced accordingly with the
company means and tools. A brief explanations are given below in different concerns:
- Staffing:
the company knows exactly its need in term of managers and engineers with
overall project progress, it gives a good visibility and to seek for
talented people in internal or from the recruitment market, and enough
time to prepare and train them;
- Procurement
& purchasing: the best planning of the cash flow while applying an
intelligent policy of money spending, and it’s also about having the
financial flexibility as regards with keeping the cash or making orders.
Ensuring also the availability of materials, equipment and services for
the construction people just in time in order to prevent shortage,
reducing the waste of time and to maintain the quality of these materials
and equipment (the less warehousing and storage we have the best it is);
- Workforce
estimation: it refers to the agility to foresee the labour as needed and
as it is expected on the planned project progress, the benefit from this
operational behaviours is similar to the staffing dimensioning (right
qualified people in right places and on the right timing);
- Suppliers
and subcontractors: with the aims to maintain the just right pressure on
suppliers and subcontractors or eventually a consortium company for
delivering functional items (engineering services, technical packages, equipment
or construction application) within the perfect respect of limestone and
the project baselines.
- etc.
Project
baselines is an important tools to measure a construction project performance,
we have mainly three types of baselines:
- The
scope baseline; it’s the approved project description and the validated
WBS.
- The
schedule baseline; it’s a schedule with start and finish dates, it serves
as a basis for the comparison between the actual progress and the
calculated one initially.
- The cost
baseline; it’s almost same as the schedule baseline except that it’s a
matter of the budget spending progress rather than time. Just notice that
a validated Work Breakdown Structure WBS helps us to perform a Cost
Breakdown Structure that will serve to elaborate the cost planning.
Nota
Bene: there is also talk of quality baseline, we will speak about this topic in
the next chapter.
Once
all these baselines are defined we can go forward throughout calculating the
actual completion date and budget, based on these two parameter we foresee the
right need in term of human, material and financial resources within the
perfect weighting over a time-scale in order to realize the project on time, on
budget and to meet the client expectations, that will certainly ensure a client
satisfaction.
The
utilization of a software is highly recommended mainly in the case of
megaprojects and huge construction activities. Some projects are too much
complicated in terms of needed resources and the number of tasks to perform
with a very improved organization, such as operation cannot be done without a
calculating tools for generating the optimal schedule fed by appropriate
resources which are distributed based on the progress of the project and its
duration. We notice Primavera and MS Projects as two of the most usual software
used worldwide.