I am sure construction programs or project management tools have been around since Noah’s Ark or the Pyramids were built. It seems to me that while it is a very old skill, the building industry is sadly lacking in the project management skills needed to build buildings and homes quickly and efficiently these days. I hear so many stories of builders or supervisors calling a supplier the day before they need some material and expecting the supplier to drop everything and get the material to them the next day.
The old quote by Benjamin Franklin (died 1790 and was one of the founding fathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence) that “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail” or in a variant of that “If you fail to plan then to plan to fail” is true in so many facets of business, including construction and project management.
In a previous article, “Seven Traits of a Highly Successful Builder”, I said that the best builders are the best schedulers or project managers. A building company is essentially a ‘process management’ business. It manages processes undertaken by staff and hundreds of external businesses such as trade contractors and suppliers. Completing a successful home is the result of the process and project management of many processes and people over a long period of time.
In another article, “Builders, Are You Flying by the Seat of your Pants”, I outlined 21 principles or strategies that the best builders use and using construction programs is one of them. A good construction program brings together all of the work done leading up to the construction and brings it together in a ‘symphony’ on-site.
The good trades will want to work for the best schedulers or project managers because they know they can make money on their jobs. Poor scheduling leads to loss of income for the trades or higher prices from the trades to compensate for the lack of planning. Mobile phones have also contributed to the poor planning and project management in my view. Mobile phones cannot do the forward planning, the construction supervisor or project manager has to do this.
Setting up construction programs for various types of construction or building types, especially for house builders can save supervisors many hours of planning as the ‘thinking’ has already been done for them. Pre-prepared construction programs also provide the opportunity to review the sequencing of the trades and materials as well as the construction methodology before starting on-site.
Before you can prepare any project management software, you need to be sure your programs are working properly otherwise you will end up having to amend every schedule created and the supervisor will become frustrated and not use the software. A paper-based construction program is useful in testing your programs first before committing to a software program.
The construction program should combine the Construction Program or the sequencing of the tasks needed to build the home with the 'Call Forward' program. The 'Call Forward' term comes from the 'lead time' or amount of time needed to call up materials and labour ahead of the date required to be on-site.
This process helps ensure there are trades and deliveries happening on the job every day and a supervisor doesn't have to keep all the information in his or her head on every job. You would go crazy trying to do all that. Some supervisors and construction managers over the years have tried to just use the 'call forward' however, this is useless without the construction program as you essentially have to work out when the trade or material is required on the site before you can 'call' it up. You end up doing the sequencing anyway and this just leads to more work for the supervisor.
Construction programs works best with a Daily Diary recording all the dates and calls made unless the technology is able to log the emails or calls and can provide a combined calendar of tasks planned for each day moving forward.
The programs are primarily used by site supervisors who project manage the building construction using the program and the call forward feature. These programs are also used by Customer Service staff who can refer to the program to advise customers of the proposed work in the coming weeks as well as understand the progress of the job. Estimators can also use these programs to help create delivery dates for purchase orders and also confirm lead times required by suppliers when procuring materials.
Work out the capacity of your trade base, that is, how many jobs can be released to site per week or month and ensure the jobs are released at this rate. If you need to increase the rate of release of jobs to site, then the capacity of the trade base will have to increase.
If you need help with setting up a construction program, then The 3C Mentor Builders Business Resources site has a number of construction programs that can be used for typical house construction.
The whole purpose of The 3C Mentor and Alpha Edge is to help create really great businesses in the residential building industry and delivered by our unique ‘Four Pillars to Your Success’ – Business Coaching, Business Consulting, Business Resources and Construction Software.
For an overview of these four pillars go to Alpha Edge here. To find out more about our Business Coaching go to The 3C Mentor here, for further information about the services Alpha Edge can provide go directly to Alpha Edge here and to access the many documents and resources you need as a residential builder, go to our Builder’s Business Resource Centre here. For more information on the construction software and how to ‘Be a Better Builder’, click here
Comments