and welcome to this series of lectures in the massive open online course initiative
titled principles of construction management now this is the first lecture in this module
and we will talk about the general overview in the course what is the backdrop with which
we are talking about construction management we are looking at infrastructure management
or infrastructure creation as an integral part of development especially in developing
countries whether it is the design and construction of roads airports houses industry or whatever
this kind of infrastructure is absolutely required to achieve any kind of development
now large scale construction activities are involved in many of these projects which could
include roads and railways like i said in the transport infrastructure power plants
in the energy sector or industrial construction for example refineries in this course we are
concerned primarily with the construction phase of these projects as we will see in
this lecture and as well as as we go along in the other lectures of the course
there are different stages or phases that we have in any of these large projects beginning
with conceiving the project doing a planning and then a detailed planning construction
finally operation and so on so in this course as i said here we are primarily concerned
with the issues that are of importance during the construction of these projects now we
must remember that every construction project is unique in terms of local conditions the
people involved in the construction process the design of the facility whatever it is
the equipment involved in the construction and the quality of materials
for example even if you are talking of metro construction in different cities in different
countries even though the technology is the same but the project in city one and the city
two is unique because of the people involved in constructing it the equipment that they
use to implement the same technology the quality or the characteristics of the materials that
are being used and so on also every construction project involves a commitment of a huge amount
of resources in terms of funds manpower material equipment and time
any of these infrastructure projects can easily span over several months and sometimes several
years now what happens as a result of this is that at different stages right from the
word go somebody has to plan what kind of resources what kind of equipment for example
will be needed at different points in time as the project progresses what kind of manpower
will be required at different points in time of the project as it moves through completion
similarly very important is the issue of what is called cash flow now cash flow essentially
refers to the flow of funds there will be a total cost associated with any project but
that amount of money or that fund is not required immediately as we start the project as different
activities get completed different amounts of money or different amount of funds is required
so this requires a planning a foresight into how the project will move and this kind of
a thought process is an absolutely integral part of a construction management plan now
let us look at who the stakeholders in a large construction project are please remember that
as i have said we are not talking of in this course a small project even though bits and
pieces of whatever we talk about will be applicable to even the smallest of projects but its perhaps
easier if we are able to visualize a large construction project and keep that in mind
when we talk of some of these things so coming to the stakeholders in the construction
project there are at least these six entities which are involved now lets look at the client
now the client is essentially the owner of the facility if its a road project in india
for example it could be the nhai or the state government they become the clients now the
person who owns this facility does not necessarily have to have the expertise to design the project
or design roadways or the bridges that will come in a road project and so on and therefore
the client has to have a designer who will actually carry out the design
now this design could be functional it could be aesthetic it could be structural so depending
on what kind of design we are looking at we need to have the services of a company or
a set of people who can be clubbed as designers then there is a contractor now the contractor
is the agency which actually carries out the work they do the execution of the project
they construct the project off late investors have also become a very important player in
this whole game we often hear of the ppp model that is the
public private partnership model where the funds for these projects are not being provided
by the government traditionally the client used to provide the funds especially for large
infrastructure projects it was the government which was the owner of projects but of late
it has been realized that we can and we perhaps should have the involvement of investors in
the project so then we come in with investors that could
be banking institutions it could be the contractor who takes a loan and so on and so forth all
kinds of models are being talked about different models are being implemented in india in other
countries in the world and so on then there is the regulator now government now and government
agencies largely play the role of a regulator that is they are the people who are charged
with the responsibility of ensuring that the design the construction and the operation
is done as per an existing or in a greed guideline or a specification so there are regulatory
agencies like the standardization agencies the people who write tests methods and so
on so there will be a regulatory agency which will lay down the methods for testing
concrete for example what kind of concrete is acceptable or not these are the rules of
the game that have to be decided before the project actually starts sometimes of course
there is a need to change those specifications as we go along as we become wiser with the
execution of the project but there is this regulatory agency and the documents that are
issued from time to time by the regulatory agencies
then at the end of it and in fact it should have been perhaps in the beginning of it there
is the user now the user is often not necessarily involved in all phases of the project for
example if it is a road project the user is the guy who is actually driving the car or
the person who is driving the truck but those people are not directly involved in the planning
of the project the construction of the project and so on but they are very much part of me
in fact the whole project is being built for them
their needs and requirements should therefore should always be kept at the back of our mind
when we actually do the design and that is what is normally ensured in the design process
and thats why we have design guidelines so those are the kind of technical details which
we are already familiar with so we in this course are looking at the entire issue of
a project its design its construction and so on from a management perspective and we
are trying to figure out what are the roles and responsibilities the importance of the
different stakeholders because at the end of it these different stakeholders will play
a very important role as far as management of the project is concerned
apart from these there are other stakeholders for example there could be safety auditors
which in one sense of the word can be a part of the regulatory agency there could be quality
auditors which again is not necessarily a part of the regulatory mechanism but there
could be outside agencies which are involved in the safety and quality audits of projects
similarly there could be third party consultants a consultant and a designer sometimes may
be the same sometimes may be different the designers are basically general purpose design
companies or firms whereas consultants are more specialized in their jobs so even designers
or contractors often that matter even the client may sometimes hire a consultant or
request a consultant to help in a certain process whether its the design of the construction
or whatever it may be and of course this list is not exhaustive and there are other people
who could be also stakeholders in a project so now coming to the stages in a project we
have the concept that is somebody thinks or puts together a proposal that we need a road
to connect point a and point b this concept is now put into a planning stage where the
routing for example for that road is decided because to connect point a and point b there
could be multiple routes which will have individual difficulties
so for example if we go by route one there could be a river to be crossed at one place
in route two the river could may need to be crossed at another point which will have its
own local geographical conditions and so on so this is the stage where this kind of routes
are examined and we come up with different options followed by planning we go into design
where more specific details or more information is gathered and based on that information
the actual design exercise starts once the design is completed we go into the
execution phase where the project is taken out of the drawing board and is implemented
at site now we must remember that as far as construction projects are concerned and that
is the project that is our target in this course they have to be implemented in the
field and the project which does not get implemented on the field there are projects which do not
see the light of the day and are not implemented but that is not what is offer concerned right
now so once the project goes to the field then
the construction activities start after the project has been completed the project is
put into operation once the road is completed it is open to traffic most of the time we
think that the cycle ends there but sooner or later we will have to be concerned with
this stage called decommissioning where we say that ok this road or this bridge has served
its purpose and now needs to be replaced now once we are replacing a bridge we have
to be careful we have to plan as to what we will do with that bridge which has been built
and has served its purpose we must remember that this total cost including the design
execution operation and decommissioning is what constitutes the lifecycle cost of the
project so now the concept of life cycle costing of a project is coming into our thinking in
a big way and we are bothered about the cost of a project not only up to the execution
stage but also to include how much is the cost while the project is being operated and
finally what it will cost to decommission that particular project or that particular
road or a bridge or whatever it is it goes without saying that more meticulous
the plan smoother is the execution it depends on us if we are able to foresee the kind of
difficulties that will arise as the project goes through different stages the execution
in the project will be smooth if we have not foreseen difficulties that may arise then
it will be a stop and go situation and that is extremely detrimental to any project from
the point of view of time over runs cost over runs and so on and so forth
smooth execution what does that mean it means management of time cost quality unplanned
changes on the field and disputes so if we are able to do a meticulous plan we will be
able to ensure that we are able to complete the project in time we are able to implement
the project with good quality at the cost that it was expected to be completed without
having too many unplanned changes on account of field conditions and without any disputes
so now coming to this course this discussion of hours for about forty lectures or forty
sessions has been divided into different modules the first module is a general overview and
introduction to the course and thats what we are starting to do today the next one is
estimation of a project cost followed by some amount of construction economics planning
and scheduling in projects that is actually divided into two parts we have quality management
safety management and finally legal aspects of a construction project
so this course as you can see is not really a depth course that is we will probably not
have the time its not intended that we go very deep into any of these aspects but its
a width course where the effort will be to expose you different aspects of management
of a construction project so that you are better prepared to handle a construction project
from a management point of view and also you appreciate the kind of information or the
kind of skills that a project manager should have in most colleges in our education system
we have courses related to project management or construction management as part of the
civil engineering curriculum but most of the time they concentrate on the planning and
scheduling part so we of course do some planning and scheduling but we will try to cover some
other aspects as well so now coming to the first module on the general overview and project
organization we will basically talk about stakeholders
phases and features of a construction project a typical organizational structure the role
of a project manager and very importantly the multi discipline nature of construction
projects we will talked about the resources that are required in a construction project
and introduced the concept of the s curve now the s curve is a very interesting idea
which helps us understand the extent of progress of a project
we must remember that if we think of a road project there are different activities involved
any project will have completely different activities involved there could be land acquisition
there could be excavation there could be some amount of design going on and so on so now
at a given point in time how do we say what percentage of the project is complete is the
project ten percent complete or is a twenty percent complete
so how do we answer this question the s curve provides one of the options so in fact i must
share with you that this course is not really a very objective discussion there is a certain
amount of subjectivity there is a certain amount of openness that ok there is no unique
solution its only a matter of a thought process its more tough information that you have and
how you interpret it is left more or less to the practice the person who is actually
taking decisions so as far as a second module is concerned
which will deal with estimation of project costs we must remember that the cost of a
project has at least two sides to it one is the cost that the client is willing to pay
for a certain project if the client thinks of a project as an owner that ok i want to
build a road from point one to point two what is the estimated cost of that project
so we will look at cost estimates the clients estimate preliminary estimates detailed estimates
item description construction equipment depreciation overheads introduction to contracts and bidding
processes contract as estimates and concepts of markup so at the outset that client makes
an estimate that ok for this project this will be the total cost
a client goes to the market in wise tenders and different people express their willingness
different people means different contractors they express their willingness they submit
their bids to complete that project in a certain amount of money this amount obviously need
not completely match the estimate from the client side of course if the client has done
a thorough job the differences are likely to be small if that job is not very thorough
the differences are likely to be large and those are the kind of things which we will
talk about as we go along in this course we will talk about construction economics
in module three now what we will talk about here is concepts like cash flow the time value
of money payback period return on investment evaluating alternatives based on cash flows
concepts of npv irr discounted payback period evaluating projects of unequal lives capital
rationing taxation inflation and cost benefit ratio
so you can imagine that there is a whole lot of things to be done and in fact as we go
along you will realize that sometimes i will just make a definition and then leave it for
you to do some homework and understand on your own using literature and the kind of
text books or papers which are available modules four and five will deal primarily with planning
and scheduling of activities here in module four we will talk about introduction
to construction planning project plans work breakdown structure network diagrams precedence
rules aoa aon bar charts cpm pert and so on at the bottom of it the thought process is
that different activities in a project cannot be all started at the same time certain activities
have to be completed before certain other activities can be taken up
so we cannot do for example the superstructure of a bridge unless we have done the foundations
so in that sense the foundations precede the superstructure civil engineers are often the
last to complete their design because a lot of input for civil design comes from mechanical
and electrical engineers but the civil engineers are the first to be at site to start the project
to start the construction in the project for example if there is an industry or an
industrial construction and you want to put a cooling tower so the construction of the
cooling tower is indeed a civil engineers job but the capacity of the cooling tower
the technology to be used and so on is definitely not a civil engineers cup of tea so somebody
else will decide those things and finally give that input to the civil engineer who
has to start his design even to take another example even in building
construction suppose you have a multi story building where you want to install a lift
so somebody has to first tell you the specifications which are required for the lift and only then
you can design your lift well and unless you design your lift well you cannot actually
complete the design of the building so thats what i mean to say when i say that the civil
engineers get the input the last but they are the first to actually start the work you
cannot have the lift installed unless the building has been completed
so anyway thats what we will talk about when we talk about planning and scheduling in the
second part we look at this planning and scheduling discussion from a slightly different perspective
and talk about resource allocation resource leveling network crashing the cost of crashing
and the cost time trade off now module six would deal with some principles of quality
management where we will talk about quality control quality
assurance total quality management quality audits the cost of quality iso standards and
inspection the discussion in this module would largely be related to construction projects
we must keep in mind and i am going to reiterate that when we come to this as far as industrial
systems are concerned as far as production industry is concerned where we are talking
about manufacturing of cars we are talking of any industrial product which
is manufactured in the industry the concepts of quality and quality control are reasonably
well developed the issue is whether those systems are applicable to construction activities
which are unique that is they are non repeatable they are done at site under completely open
conditions where we do not have controlled environment when we are constructing a bridge
is not a factory condition it could start raining sometimes it could become very hot
sometimes it could become windy and so on so the issue will be that ok how do we ensure
quality of construction under these conditions of course we have a lot of information available
from our friends in mechanical engineering from our friends in industrial management
what we have to actually adapt those prescriptions or those specifications in our systems as
far as construction projects are concerned of course it doesnt mean that we dont have
any methods or any protocols to ensure quality as far as construction is concerned but we
will try to evaluate those issues as we go along in this module of quality management
now module seven would be safety management we will talk about unsafe acts and conditions
injuries accidents personal protective equipment safety audits role of a site engineer the
principles of safety safety manual safety plan incentives and osha i am not explaining
to you what osha is try to figure out if you can otherwise of course when we come to it
well talk about it the thought process that i have in including
this module in this course on principles of construction management is that we must as
civil engineers or as engineers with any kind of affiliation we must ensure that the construction
activity is safe it is accident free it does not cause injury or any kind of harm to the
people involved in the project or people who are not involved in the project but happened
to be passing by or at the end of it even the people who will use the project at the
end of the execution now its very unfortunate that we often hear
that a certain building under construction or certain bridge under construction collapses
there are reasons for that and those are exactly the kind of reasons which we must investigate
we must be aware of what could cause an accident and try to make sure that accidents do not
happen accidents are accidents sometimes they will happen they are unforeseen they are unplanned
nobody plans for an accident but there has to be a method in which we will or we can
control accidents make sure that accidents dont happen
there have to be methods by which we can evaluate one company or another in terms of its accident
record in terms of its safety record so these are the kind of things which we talk about
when you go through this module on safety management when it comes to legal aspects
of construction what will you talk about there are different agencies involved in the project
it could be the client it is the designer its the contractor its the investor its a
regulator and so on and so forth now if there are multiple agencies involved
in the project what should be the kind of documentation which will define the roles
and responsibilities of each of them and that is what is basically a contract we must remember
that these are large projects spanning over several months or years involving hundreds
of people sometimes thousands of people and therefore unless there are written documents
which define the roles and responsibilities which define the kind of work they will do
its very very difficult to manage a construction project thats one part of it
the second part of it is that there is a large amount of money being used and we have to
make sure that the money is being used in the best possible way in the most effective
way there is no wastage of funds and if there is any waste of resources by any of the stakeholders
there have to be ways and means of penalizing that particular agency so all that part is
laid down in contracts and that constitutes the legal aspects of construction and what
we will be talking about is claims dispute arbitration project closure role of third
parties legal cell in a construction company and labor laws
now labor laws is also a very important part of a construction managers job as a construction
manager one must be aware of the rules that governed employment of labor in terms of the
facilities that they need to be provided the kind of protection they need to be provided
the kind of facilities and so on so this is what the course will contain as far as assignments
in this course are concerned there will be lots of assignments because obviously being
a width course we will not be able to cover many of the keywords that we talked about
in any detail so there will be just the definition given
in this lecture and then it maybe will ask you to develop it on your own so basically
what i have thought is that we will divide the assignments in this course into two parts
one would be normal assignments for submission where they will be grading and solutions would
be provided and we will probably have a discussion in the discussion forum and so on and so forth
but apart from these assignments there will be what i call type two assignments
which are basically food for thought and do it yourself kind of assignments where they
would be reading and self learning questions questions which i will give you and not answer
them and of course there will be no grading so there is no submission of these assignments
there is no grading but it will be interesting and important for you to go through these
questions try to have your own answers we will try to see if we can discuss them
in the forum sometime but they will not be part of the grading and evaluation schemes
and obviously we will not be able to provide any solutions because we must remember that
as i mentioned earlier there are no closed form solutions to several problems as we go
along in this course you will realize that there are different options and the whole
idea basically would be for us to develop those options
we think of those options we foresee the kind of difficulties that will arise the steps
through which we will have to go through if we choose a particular option and so forth
so its one option versus the other sometimes there are closed form solutions where we can
evaluate those options sometimes there are not so the type two assignments will be basically
the self learning types and type one assignments will be those where we will try to guide you
through the learning process as far as the grading policy for certification
in this course is concerned we will follow the policy which is laid down centrally as
far as the moocs initiative is concerned the assignments will carry two five percent best
six of the eight assignments being considered and the final examination will be seventy
five percent so now as far as reference books is concerned this is just a list of four of
the several several texts which are available in this area
so depending on the kind of topic we are talking about and the kind of interest that you have
you may be able to find a lot more material on any of the subjects that we are going to
deal with but here i have listed only four of the books which could be of some interest
to all of us with this we come to a end of this discussion
thank you and i look forward to seeing you in the subsequent lectures of the course
thank you