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Construction Project Execution:

Scope and Time Management
Melaku Tadesse (Civil Engineer) PE, CM
Email- [email protected]
Tel-251(0) 911232267
May. 2023
 Planning Construction Project Execution
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 Project Planning and Scheduling

 Planning answers questions What? How? Where? By
Whom and When (overall duration, start and end of the
whole project)
 Scheduling deals with the When in detail.
 Scheduling deals with the timing and sequence of
operations/activities and the sum of which is to give
project completion time

 What to plan, who should plan, how to plan?

 Planning Construction Project Execution
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 Planning Scope
 Scope: “the sum of the products, services, and results to
be provided by a project” PMI
 E.g. building for residential, school, factory, for
service life of ‘x’ years
 Scope management – the process of identifying and doing
only the works that are necessary to complete a project
successfully. Avoids doing unapproved extra work and
unnecessary works
 For contractors scope should consider the whole
activities: the deliverables and the enablers
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 Planning Scope: approach

 Creating (Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): break

the works into desired lower levels. It is dividing the

general scope into type and hierarchy may be up 3 to 5
levels
 The hierarchical breaking down of the works may be

done based on size, complexity, proximity or/and phase

of completion required by the specific contract
 WBS may include dividing the works into area, sector

or task, group or a combination of these which may

further be divided into sub-project, functions (tasks),
work packages, activities and operations or processes
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 Planning Scope: sources: documents and the construction site
 Document Study
 Plans (drawings), BoQs, specifications, contract conditions;
relevant codes, legal & regulatory documents; social, business
and natural environments; publications, written materials
 Company records including its ways of doing (culture)
 Site Investigation
 identifying local inputs , utility lines, safety and health issues;
site office (and may be camp) location, social (culture) and
environmental factors; status of work site (right-of-way) to
start temporary and permanent works; accessibility to the site
itself and other resources
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 Planning Scope: Site Investigation
 Competency required: Knowledge of the work, prior
practice on similar work, experience in decomposing works
with respect to resource allocation, quality and cost control
and discipline/desire
 The project manager (project lead team) needs to know the
full picture of the works including the environment where it
is to be implemented.
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 Planning Scope: WBS preparation benefits

 WBS helps not to miss work items within the scope
and to:
 group coherent ones to be delegated to a party
 identify risks and address them properly
 keep stakeholders informed and hence get their
cooperation
 get commitment and focus of teams involved
 ensure better control
 control the impact of desired changes (control scope
creep and gold plating)
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 Planning Scope
 Rules in performing WBS
 Team participation and systematic approach to splitting
 Make sure that only the work required to make the
project deliverable are the focus
 Focus on critical few (major activities). From the BOQ
or Activity Schedule select about 20 pay items whose
amounts add up to about 80% of the contract amount
 continue breaking down to the appropriate level for
managing the project work. The project manager is the
one who should decide the levels
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 Sample outcome of WBS

Level -1

Level -2

L-3
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 Project level organization: the organizing may be done

based on Resource, Responsibility (organization breakdown)
and WBS (work breakdown structure)

From resource & responsibility

OBS

WB
S From the scope of Works
 Scheduling: planning time
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 General approach for managing Project Time
 “Time is an executive’s scarcest and most precious
resource”, Drucker.
 Project time management is not limited to schedule of the
construction work activities. Since project work schedule is
influenced by actions/inactions of various internal &
external stakeholders. Operating processes at firm and
project level other than the people engaged in line execution
affect much.
 A project manager who manages his time well, manages his
team and other stakeholders better. He can manage his time
well if:
 He/she can select where to invest his time
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 General approach for managing project Time…cont

 Values the discipline for planning. “Without plan executives
become prisoners of events” Drucker
 He/she knows how to direct his team and influence others in
the interest of project schedule
 He/she can discipline him/herself & others through selecting
tasks requiring focus on daily, weekly & monthly basis
 He/she knows how to identify and handle time wasters through
developing habits of:
 pro-activeness in taking actions/decisions
 Using work hours for works
 Identifying & selecting important items & prioritize them
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 Examples of time wasters/robbers:

 Reworks and/or scraps due to lack of quality system
and skilled manpower
 Telephone, email, casual office conversation,
 Many meetings and lack of focus
 poor delegation,
 executive meddling,
 indecisions,
 lack of plan or commitment to plans,
 Too slow and disintegrated cross-functional processes
 not setting priority for important matters
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 Scheduling
 deals the When in detail.
 Scheduling deals with the timing and sequence of
operations/activities and the sum of which is to give
project completion time
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Network/Precedence Diagram
Define

Sequence Per
Ac t
i a ctiv
WB vities f ity &
S di r proj total
ctio om
Work
nary
Re Method ect for
sou Duration
rce
ass
ign Schedule
me
nt Tools Monitor
: So
f t wa &
re Control

Time Management Processes

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 Sequencing Activities
 Constraints: activity dependence, resource availability,
work place constraint need to be considered
 Skills: knowledge & experience in similar works’ field
operation, sequencing methods, manual & relevant
software operation
 Techniques: precedence, activity on arrow, or on node
diagrams; or previously used template
 Output: precedence/network diagram best fit
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D 5 G
3 7
B 0 0 0
E d1 d2

2 4 I
1 A C F 6 8
0 0 0 0 0

A-O-A with dummy activity

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 Sequencing Activities
 Precedence Diagram: are node networks that help to
show four relationships of sequential activities. These
are: Finish-to-finish, start-to-start, finish-to-finish and
start-to-finish. The first three are the ones common in
construction
 Finish-to-Stats (FS), e.g. finish formwork before
starting bar placing
 Start-to-Start (SS), e.g. Until a certain percentage
of clearing is done bulk/pit excavation cannot start
 Finish-to-Finish (FF), e.g. until pipe placing is
finished backfill cannot finish
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 Sequencing Activities
 Dependencies
 Mandatory: legal, contractual and most importantly
physical limitation e.g superstructure is impossible
before foundation has been built
 Discretionary: established based on knowledge of
best practice even if there are other options eg.
Electric work to be done after plumbing
 External- project and non-project activities may be
factors e.g. control of environmental authority
 Internal –involves relationship b/n project activities
and are under the control of project team(?)
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 Choice of Technology and Method of Work
 Determine method of Work: decide how each activity
or operations within an activity can be done and resource
type and quantity availability
 Method of work is influenced by Quality requirement,
time limit, availability that resource, work
environment
 Eg. Excavation: labour, labour plus equipment, fully
mechanized
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 Duration Estimation Methods

 Determine Duration: for individual activities & for the
whole project (for a contractor time is already fixed)
 Estimation Methods (tools & techniques)
 Productivity based: Using available resources define
standard crew sizes (human + equipment) of activities
or operations and their corresponding hourly or daily
outputs
 Productivity Sources include:
 personal experience
 Firm experience
 Industry customary standard
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 Duration Estimation Methods

 The role of estimator: taking input from any of these
requires evaluating the new work environment with
respect to the known or experience taken as basis
 Physical condition, weather, tools, equipment and
other ergonomic factors, supervision,
 employee skill and attitude
 Any other factor that may affect productivity
 The rate may be based on:
 Standard crew or individual out put
 Then duration = total planned quantity/Crew productivity
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 Duration Estimation Methods

 Methods (tools & techniques) commonly used are:
critical path method (CPM) and Program Evaluation and
Review Technique (PERT).
 For construction works CPM is commonly used since
activities are easier to identify and make estimates for.
 Uses single point estimate referred as deterministic
 Confidence on the people and other resources will have
similar performance
 CPM is obtained by adding durations of activities on
paths of the network and then choosing the longest of all
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 Develop Schedule
 Scheduling is putting activities into time slots/ calendar/
marking the start and end dates of activities on time scale
(time rate of execution of activities).
 But generally scheduling is determining an appropriate set of
activity start time, resource allocation and completion times in
the interest of whole project completion
 common Scheduling methods: Bar/Gantt/ Chart, Line of
Balance (LOB) for repetitive activities; Time-distance-
diagram for linear projects such as, road, pipe lying…
 Tools: To simplify network analysis and scheduling
computer software program can be used. In this, MS Project
and Primavera are prominent ones
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5 10 15 20 25
Time
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4
B
3 r
i
2 d
g
1 e

10 20 30 40 50
Distance
 Summary and Reflections
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 Key points for Scope planning

 Views and practices
 What salient points participants may have captured
from the discussion and found energizing to initiate
changes in their current practices
 What do the points impact?
 Attitude
 Skill
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Thank you for your:

Attention & Active
Participation,