Back to Basics #33 – How To Plan Your Works

Back to Basics #33 – How To Plan Your Works

Planning is an important function in any construction organisation which is often undervalued and the challenges under-estimated. Everyone has heard the old adage “fail to plan – plan to fail”, but improvising is a risky business.

The purpose of Project Planning is to establish, develop, and most importantly, communicate the overall strategy for the delivery of the Project in the most efficient and timely manner.

A failure of many Contractors is to leave the entire planning process to the allocated Project Planner. Creating the project delivery strategy should be a team effort, with all roles in the Project involved to ensure all the Team’s knowledge, experience and opinions are considered and incorporated.

The “Planner” brings all those ideas together and ensures ownership and accountability of the plan is as a Team, not an Individual.

There are many tools available to carry out the planning function, and this is not restricted to Gantt Charts. There are many other ways and means of developing and communicating the Plan. However, for the purposes of this article, we focus on the preparation of the Gantt Chart, as this is the primary tool used for determining the overall Project sequencing and duration in line with the requirements of most Standard Forms of Contract.

General planning principles are considered, along with the basics of programming, programme content and presentation.

To manage any construction or engineering Project successfully, it is necessary for the company undertaking the Project to have workable procedures in place that allow the management and control of Projects from the outset.

Within the established control procedures, a robust policy needs to be implemented on how a Construction Programme is to be formed, taking into consideration that change needs to be managed effectually, yet still allowing its active use on a day-to-day basis by the Project Team all in accordance with the Contract Documents.

 

For further reading on this subject our full article Back to Basics #33 – How To Plan Your Works can be accessed by clicking HERE

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