A professional construction administration team consists of professionally efficient construction managers and individuals. These professional construction administration team carry out the planning, designing and construction of undertakings in an integrated manner.
Conflicts due to any disagreeing between the team members is minimized by keeping certain contractual agreements within the team. This help in bringing greater response and output from the management team.
There are certain specific requirements and proficiencies, that professional construction manager is specialized at when placed in a professional construction management. Some of them are specified below:
1. building supervisor must move with the ideas of the owner and the Architectural / Engineering firm’s representatives, from the beginning of the undertaking. If needed, essential opinions and recommendations must be suggested on the design of the plan to support improvements. He must help in bringing up a recommendation on the schedules, the technology used in building as well as their economic factors.
2. Check the variation of cost and project time, based on the alternative suggested. Construction manager should be open to suggestion about alternatives for the design and the construction methods, if essential.
3. project development with time must be monitored, to assure no extra money is spent for work, without the knowledge of the facility owner.
4 . The check for any due payment to the contractor, or in the standard of the products accrued, are made by him. coordination of all the substance and machinery procurement from all the contractors are dealt by the supervisor.
5. performance of any other services, that are related to the same project as demanded by the contractor are also conducted.
The professional building administration is mainly implemented for mega or large scale undertakings, which requires total control.
At one point of time, it may be ” functional organization”, which later changes to “matrix organization”, which later may change into “undertaking organization”. It is not always necessary for the undertaking to have the same order. The organizational approach for each stage of the construction undertaking will change as the undertaking progresses.
When too many small-scale undertakings are employed, a matrix organization is implemented. A matrix organization is explained in figure-1. Note: Matrix organization of an engineering division is a type of undertaking organization chosen to be employed at any stage of managing the organization.
Fig.1: Representation of a Matric Organization
Fig.2: Representation of undertaking Oriented Organization
It is quite difficult to handle the three at the same time. This would really make the theory as well as the management system difficult but must be implemented for the cost effectiveness of the total undertaking. Within the course of the overall undertaking, the combination of the matrix, functional and the undertaking organization system can be employed simultaneously.
It is observed that many large successful undertaking organization possess a strong sub-organization, which is of matrix type. This is the area where most of the control of the schedule and the basic cost responsibility is placed.
This sub-organization is known as the “ cost center” or the “ undertaking”. This is taken care by the undertaking supervisor himself. The cost center matrix comprises of members or participants, taken from different units of the organization.
Mainly members are supposed to submit technical reporting to the higher professionals in the organization, of different units and departments.
The final success in bringing cost-effectiveness is by making these undertaking sub-organization into a single team. This is carried out by the leadership owned by the undertaking manager.
Centralizing or decentralizing of the decision is crucial for the organization of the mega project.
The project is the Alaska Pipeline Project, which was considered as the largest construction project in series of 1970’s. Here we will discuss the organization and the administration of a real-time project. The total estimates were 10 billion dollars. It covered an area of 800 miles, employing thousands of laborers.
At the planning stage, the owner demanded the construction manager contractor(CMC) to carry out the pipeline portion. The CMC centralized the decision-making, by giving directions to 400 subcontractors and thousands of vendors. This centralisation caused a delay in the decision making.
He reorganized the group so the role of decision making and the role of building management contractor is changed. When almost 15% of the undertaking was completed, a new approach was put forward by the owner. The new organization comprises the owner and the CMC. This was assigned by an integrated organization.
The main objective of the system was to develop a single team, who can control every single subcontractor who is integrated within the system. Initially, there was nine tiers, i.e. from the general supervisor of the CMC to the subcontractors.
The new system had only four tiers, which comprises the senior undertaking supervisor (of the owner) to the subcontractors. This new system bought a unified organization. This system facilitated clear communication within each level. This helped to bring up with good decisions.
Five sections of pipeline projects, in five different geographic locations was carried out by the new organization. This means decentralization was made possible by the new system. Each of them was assigned a section supervisor. When 98%of the project was complete, incomplete activities were consolidated and was assigned again to avoid duplication. The single bottom line responsibility where identified.
Hence the undertaking was initially controlled by different organizations, which later was controlled and run by the integrated organization. This helped in making a small organization with decentralized profit centers.