welcome to this module on principles of construction management where we are talking of different
facets of management of a large construction project and in this lecture we talk about
resource management in construction projects before we get into the discussion of this
topic i must share with you that resource management is a full course in itself and
we must remember that whatever discussion we are doing in this not only this lecture
but in this module all together is only a tip of the iceberg as far as the management
of construction projects is concerned there is a lot more to it than what we are talking
about here and that will become clear as we go along in this lecture
lets try to understand that a project can be taken to comprise individual activities
each of which has a definite objective to be achieved and thats why we carry out that
activity it has well defined specifications it has a well defined or a predefined start
and end date and it consumes resources now as far as construction projects are concerned
what is the kind of resources that are involved it could be materials it could be machinery
and consumables it could be manpower and all of this can be converted or in some way or
form we looked upon as money lets look closely at the various aspects of the resources and
their management so coming to the first part of the discussion
materials management now materials constitute a large fraction of the overall project cost
and though projects widely differ in their nature most commonly used materials in the
construction industry from a civil engineering perspective could be concrete which could
be cement aggregates and water it could be steel which is used as reinforcement or structural
steel it could be bitumen which is very important from the point of view of road construction
admixtures machinery consumables and so on the machinery could be cranes dozers vibrators
small equipment and all that consumables would be oils lubricants diesel and what not then
there could be pipes which could be concrete pvc steel and so on and so many other items
would work sanitary fittings plumbing and all that depending on what kind of a construction
project we are talking about now having said that the focus of material
management lies in procurement of materials in the right quantity we obviously need to
have a very clear understanding of how much of what material is required of the right
quality there have to be specifications which tell us that ok we want an rc pipe of this
diameter of this length and these numbers conforming to this standard at the right cost
at the right time please also remember that material management involves procurement of
these materials at the right time as well it makes no sense for us to buy all the material
that is required in a project upfront when the material is going to be used at a later
point in time so we must know as to when a particular material
is going to be used in the project and then try to plan for its procurement at the right
time from the right sources now these issues have to be sorted out for each of the materials
that is involved in a construction project and materials are not interchangeable you
cannot say that well i dont have a sixteen mm steel bar can you use a twenty two mm bar
in certain cases yes it can be done but that puts a needless effort on the part of the
site to these kind of changes if we want to introduce at the site that could cause delays
now proper material management helps in maintaining an uninterrupted supply of materials to the
site and also reduces the storage cost by minimizing the wastage of materials so we
must understand that material management has a cost the inventory if we buy a lot of cement
for example which is going to be used later so we have to store the cement in a godown
which is going to cost money so its better to reduce the inventory cost better to a reduce
the time that your inventory is there with you thats the way you can minimize the cost
as well as wastage of the materials so when it comes to material management there
is a planning based on availability which is involved there are procurement procedures
involved there is inspection and quality control involved at times this quality control and
inspection is done at the site where the material is being delivered or at times also at the
site where the material or the equipment is being manufactured there will be procedures
which will allow an inspection to be carried out at the shop of the fabricator or the manufacturer
to make sure that the equipment that is being delivered meets the requirements of quality
then there are storage issues involved there is inventory control which is important there
is an issue procedure and codification so what we are talking about in this discussion
today is material being procured by the client and then being supplied to the contractor
or the material being procured by the contractor for the different activities that are involved
in the construction of that project and be issue or being used by different agencies
at the site so there has to be a process there has to be a procedure so that we know ok how
much material was procured when it was procured to whom it was issued where it was consumed
when it was consumed whether it was properly inspected when it came in whether the inspection
has been completed when it has gone out and so on to make sure that the material has not
undergone any degradation while it is in storage apart from that there are transportation issues
and computerization has helped in a big way in ensuring a more sophisticated material
management system for construction projects so inventory control and material management
we are looking at inventory is usable but an idle resource thats a reiteration of what
we talked about earlier proper control over the inventory stock helps in maintaining an
adequate supply of materials to meet an expected demand pattern for a given financial investment
and depending on the criticality and usage frequency of an item the level of control
on a given item in the inventory can be decided please remember that not each item which is
being procured or used in a construction project is equally critical is equally costly is used
to the same extent and so on so as a contractor different levels of control
we need to be exercised in its procurement different levels of caution will have to be
exercised and that is something which we will talk about in the subsequent slides identifying
the criticality of an item plays a significant role in material management now how do we
identify the criticality of an item one of the options available to us is what is called
an abc analysis and here what we do is we try to categorize them based on the cost of
the item now how is the cost we decided this helps us in establishing selective control
on the number of the orders of the given item based on that category
we can classify items is a which account for lets say seventy percent of the cost b which
account for twenty percent of the cost and c which account for ten percent of the cost
this will become clear as we go through an example now obviously from this slide it is
clear that items which are classified as a need to be watched more carefully than items
which are classified as c therefore as far as class a items are concerned they should
be managed by the top level management of a company and a closer watch is required and
accurate estimates are necessary so we dont want surplus of these items because they are
simply to expensive as against that when it comes to items in class b they could be managed
by middle level managers and moderate control is required similarly for items in class c
we could talk of bulk ordering is preferred to reduce the ordering cost and junior level
staff are authorized to make the purchase so this basically outlines a guideline for
any company to come up with its own operating procedure or empowering the executives to
make purchases of certain items now lets look at an illustrative example of classifying
items using the abc analysis now if we have these eight items a to h with an average annual
consumption in numbers given in this chart or the stable and the average cost per unit
in rupees how do we classify these items into a b or c the first thing we need to do is
to find out what is the average annual cost involved in each of these items so if we take
the average consumption and the unit cost we get these numbers here
so if we go beyond that and we rank the items in the order of the total cost from the highest
to lowest if we do that this item here is the highest and there is this item here which
is the lowest so if we do that kind of an exercise and rank them here so what we have
done is that we have rank these items in this order or this figure here is the total amount
of money involved in procurement of all the items so if we take this as the base we find
that item c uses forty seven point seven five percent of the total allocation and this percentage
varies to be extend that item g comprises only one point one percent
so if we take a cumulative cost here if we take these numbers so now we can classify
these items as a b and c these two become class a because if we total these this number
here crosses seventy at this point the number here crosses ninety at this point and therefore
these two items that is c and a are classified as class a items b and d are classified as
class b and these are class c items now having done the simple exercise i would like to leave
a few questions for you to think about a contractor is making a set of houses just make a list
of things that should be managed from the point of view of materials management you
just have to look around the house and see what are the different items that need to
be procured from a contractors point of view that must include all the items that you see
in the house not counting furniture perhaps unless you are talking of furnished accommodation
but even if you are looking at bare walls it should include all items related to electricity
all items related to plumbing the woodwork and so on
so once you make that list you will realize how complicated a job it is or will be to
manage the inventory of all those items repeat this exercise when you are at a railway platform
the situation will be vastly more complicated perhaps the kind of items the scale of the
items and so on is quite different so with this food for thought lets move on to the
second resource that we talked about that is equipment mechanizing the equipment is
an important part of modern construction projects selection of appropriate equipment in terms
of type and size affects the time of completion of the project
the effect on productivity and the total cost incurred are governing factors in selecting
an equipment and the importance of timing when an equipment is required and for how
long should not be lost sight of these are the things that we will keep at the back of
our mind when we try to talk about equipment selection equipment procurement and so on
it will become very difficult for example to make changes in a mechanical equipment
once it has been delivered to the construction site or the site where its going to be installed
the common equipment used during construction vary depending upon the job or the activity
which is involved if your talk of excavation or loading it could be cranes clamshells draglines
back hoes pile drivers shovels and so on if you are talking of drilling it could be percussion
drills rotary drills the tunnel boring machine if you are talking of concreting then your
batching and mixing plant machinery mixers transit mixers pumps vibrators and so on and
so forth here is an example of two of the equipment
the back hoe and the derrick crane which are used for excavation works manufactured by
different people including lets say jcb and there is a cost which is given here as a illustrative
number of course in this discussion of this brief discussion that we are having today
on equipment management there is no way that we can make a list of all the construction
equipment that is used in a construction project and therefore the simplest thing for me to
do is to leave it to you please try to make a comprehensive list of equipment and complete
the table as suggested what i am really looking for as far as you are concerned to be able
to do this job is to understand the capacity of the equipment and try to look at the costs
involved you will realize that these costs are not trivial you should also remember that
an equipment which is procured is not necessarily consumed at that site that equipment is not
like concrete or its not like electric wires which are consumed at that site
that is something which is carried over from one side to another and to that extent that
equipment becomes an asset for the construction company so there is a whole lot of different
thought process that goes on when the company tries to procure an equipment or use an equipment
for construction at a particular site and in order to be able to do that exercise this
kind of a list will come in very handy so once you do that exercise you will realize
the complexity of the job and also get introduced to the different manufacturers who manufacture
different equipment now continuing with the discussion to increase
the job site productivity is important to select the equipment with proper characteristics
and a size most suitable for work conditions for example to excavate earth for a building
construction the following factors could play an important role in selecting the excavator
the size of the job whether you are trying to do an isolated footing or you are trying
to do a raft foundation the time constraints soil conditions availability of the equipment
cost of transportation of equipment location of dumping areas climatic conditions and so
on the engineer at site needs to keep all these conditions in mind before deciding which
particular excavator will be used for that particular project
now lets talk about procurement of equipment basically what we are talking about is the
following we need to use a certain equipment at a certain site what are our options the
equipment can be purchased apart from purchase it could be rented or it could be leased what
is the difference between rented and leased thats something which will clarify in a slide
or two but purchase we understand what it means when is it best to buy an equipment
so lets try to just cursorily understand what are the conditions which will prompt us to
buy an equipment that is the outright purchase of an equipment buying is preferred if the
equipment is essential for the key operations and is expected to provide service for a long
time so the contractor makes a decision that well
in this project this screen or this excavator is going to be used and its going to be useful
to are company even in the long run in other projects that we are going to do owning an
equipment can also provide long term tax benefits as we will probably see it some other point
in this course if we decide to buy an equipment then what are the considerations that should
operate on our mind in making that i choice what is the technology involved what is the
post warranty repair and associated cost what is the availability of maintenance and repair
facility with minimum downtime what are the operating costs is there a proper availability
of consumables and spares and what is the ease of installation and operations so these
are some of the things that must be considered when we are trying to evaluate one equipment
versus another from the point of view purchasing it
so once we have a list of these items we can almost compare to equipments a and b in terms
of technology in terms of the post warranty repair and associated cost the operating costs
and so on and so forth and then decide whether we will buy a or we will buy b now apart from
buying there is the option of renting an equipment acquiring an equipment on rent is preferred
when trying an equipment is an option before buying it if the requirement is limited for
a short duration and we do not want to make an investment into buying that equipment the
equipment is required only in certain special projects and if the old equipment is out of
service so a basically saying if you already have
the equipment we dont need another equipment of the same nature but for some reason the
equipment that we have is not working and therefore as a short term is stop gap arrangement
we need to rent an equipment now apart from renting there is the option of leasing the
equipment and leasing an equipment is preferred if the equipment is expected to be used frequently
but sufficient resources are not available to purchase so its because we cannot buy it
we lease it on the long term basis which is different from renting it which is for a short
term now coming to the third part of our discussion
which is manpower management the workforce in the construction industry comprises of
architects engineers which could be from the design office or at site managers divisional
and sectional managers human resource team the tendering team accounting personnel drafting
personnel labor drivers the security staff and the list goes on welders to carpenters
to bar vendors masons mixer operators crane operators depending on the kind of job if
you are doing plastic in quarries it could be people are involved in the blasting operations
now we must remember that each of these cranes has its own qualification certifications licenses
so a person who is operating a crane has to have a proper license has to be fit there
are fitness criteria associated with that a person is operating as a welder that person
needs to have the right kind of certificates he has to have the right kind of qualifications
so managing a site involves managing a vast diversity of personnel who are qualified differently
and have different responsibilities so basically manpower management focuses on estimating
the size of the workforce division into functional teams and scheduling the deployment of manpower
during various stages of the project much like as in the case of equipments different
kinds of people are required at different stages of the construction work civil engineers
are required in the beginning when certain kinds of construction is going on mechanical
engineers are required when the certain erections of equipment and so on is going on
so for example civil engineers are required at the outset when we are trying to do the
construction activity if we consider a industrial construction mechanical and electrical engineers
would come in later welders would come in slightly later when there is erection of pipelines
or erection of equipment going on so the task of a project manager is to carry out this
exercise in a very effective and a optimal manner now with this discussion let me close
by talking about the project managers role as such its a very crucial role and it is
expected that he will have a proper balance of technical skills and behavioral skills
and what are the kind of traits or skills that are expected in a project manager could
include team building leadership conflict resolution technical expertise planning organization
entrepreneurship administration management support and resource management
so only if you have all these skills you can be a successful project manager at a construction
site so with this we come to an end of the first module of this course on construction
management where we talked about largely the project management or construction management
in a generic sense what we will do from now on is to try to get estimates of quantities
from drawings move on to cost and other aspects related to management of construction projects
thank you