Lean construction

SEM.PCP: Marrying Construction Project and General Management

Familiarity and an in-depth knowledge on the design and construction projects is the key to a successful construction project.

Situation

These types of projects tend to have a strict set of objectives and definite constraints that may have very real effects on the time it takes to complete. It is true that the processes and technology in use may differ depending on the industry, but there are principles that remain true whether it’s applied to pharmaceutical, information technology, aerospace, or any other industry.

Project management and general management of corporations are frequently used interchangeably but they are in fact different from each other in nature.

Whereas Project Management deals with the minute details such as coordination of human and material resources involved in a project, General Management of business or corporations has broader focus that aim to maintain continuity of a business’ operations. Having said that, there are enough similarities between Project Management and General Management to allow techniques and principles from the latter to be used on the former. This is why it is critical to for Project Managers to have resources, platforms and utilities that will marry both.

Limitations and Extensions

Modern management practices, by design, incorporate techniques that were previously exclusive to their respective disciplines. For instance, general management now benefits from computer-based information management systems and even once-esoteric tools such as network analysis and computer simulation are now widely used for general management.

When applying project management principles in construction, there are objectives that are subject to resource limitations. These conflicts can have a noticeable effect on the financial and human resources and must be resolved immediately through the use of compromises or alternatives.

These functions of project management for construction may include:

• Outlining of the project’s objectives and goals. This may include outline of plans, budget, performance goals, and participants of the project itself.
• Plan of Execution. This includes, but not limited to, organized planning, design, analysis and construction relevant to the entire construction process.
• Process. Devising of systems meant for communication between various participants, along with a system that will resolve conflicts.

There are different areas that need to be measured:

• Integration and coordination of various project elements.
• Efficiency management in order to ensure that no unnecessary work is included.
• Maintaining of an effective project schedule.
• Management of project costs in order to ensure that the project is within budget.
• Quality Management with an eye towards complying with functional requirements.
• Human resource management
• Analysis and mitigation of potential risks.
• Management of communications between internal and external elements.

Business Needs

Construction Management’s 4 Critical Pillars

There are four pillars in construction management:

• behavioral science as it pertains to human resource development and management
• management science and decision process
• management process a
• sustainability plans

The management process identifies management functions in an organization with explicit attention to detail. This helps in constructing a platform that encompasses all management activities. In this sense, a manager’s responsibilities include the coordination of all relevant functions, even those that only arise as a result of changes in the process’ dynamics. These management principles can also allow for a manager’s responsibilities to be dissected, analyzed, and used to develop new ones that will improve operational efficiency.

For management science and decision process allows for the drawing and processing of facts and data to make critical and difficult decisions with ease, without unnecessarily increasing the risk factors. There is a need to use of sophisticated mathematical systems, as it facilitates accurate glimpses at problem inputs and relationships, which can then be leveraged in order to measure progress/performance and promote goal development. AI is also frequently used nowadays, greatly reducing resource requirements for isolating and solving areas of conflict in management.

Human resource development is critical because construction success relies on achieving goals through the actions of people. This means managers need to have deep knowledge of the human factors, such as needs, motivation, personality, behavior – all of which are studied in the field of behavioral science.

Sustainability is achieved by devising a process that is not reliant on specific people, flexible and relevant.

Solution

SEM.PCP: Fulfilling Management Requirements

As mentioned earlier, technological advancements have helped improve organizations’ ability to fulfill management requirements.

SEM.PCP allows project managers to organize, schedule, and monitor projects, resources, teams and other pertinent elements of a project from a simple, centralized application that can be accessed remotely from a wide range of devices that have Internet access.

SEM.PCP’s most significant contribution is that it allows project managers to reduce the amount of complexities inherent in their tasks, facilitating the seamless management and transition between multiple projects, while also serving as a data gathering and analysis tool that helps track progress and performance of a project.

Greater Transparency

SEM.PCP employs proven mapping methods that seamlessly display activities and the complex dependencies of various subprocesses/activities in a simple, easy to digest visual format that will ensure the highest possible transparency and accessibility to all levels of the management. It has powerful tools, such as the ability to search for any element in a project, be it the project name, text strings, team members, or even media content. These capabilities will be very useful not just in analysis, but also when presenting feasibility studies or reports to other team members and collaborators.

Consolidated, Comprehensive and Real-time

SEM.PCP helps facilitate greater communication between participants in a project (which is a big part of project management), via a newsfeed that allows all authorized individuals to be up to date on important updates and information with regards to project developments or deadlines.

Simplification of Complex Data

A common problem with other project management software is that they can be intimidating to use as they tend to present data without any regard for ease of interpretation or organization. SEM.PCP addresses this problem with a wealth of features that allow information to be presented in a form that is easiest to digest, from the use of separate work areas called “Workstreams” to the use of milestones to mark and structure projects into digestible work packages. It also supports displaying complex dependencies between processes, which minimizes confusion even when the number of concurrent projects running make it difficult to recognize bottlenecks or delays due to information overload.

This software is particularly useful in the construction sector, and in some cases allows organizations to manage and successfully complete hundreds of concurrent projects at the same time, which has the benefit of not only reducing costs usually associated with lack of efficiency and prolonged production, but also increases revenue through an increase in completed projects.

 

• collects data and analyzes it to draw insights towards efficiency
• design a feasibility study that reduces the margin of error
• analyzes trend to in order to design and create a responsive process
• tracks developments real time in different levels: HR progress, budget and process

The key influencer in any construction project is design and construction decisions. SEM.PCP is programmed to draw out decisions, not just data. This, in turn, results to efficiency which translates to higher productivity and budget fidelity.