Management Portfolio for a Civil Engineering Project - Assignment Example

Management Portfolio Introduction and purpose For any civil engineering project to be successfully executed, it is imperative that a working management portfolio should be created, which would show how each stage of the operations would be pragmatically carried out. This portfolio aims at explaining all the strategic civil engineering management systems that are required in completing a particular project. Mapping out management portfolio encourages efficiency; and in case there are any problems during the project execution, the portfolio would act as a corrective template for implementing the right procedures in the areas of safety, management, engineering and conformity to the necessary legal regulations. It is apt to aver that executing a civil project without a working management portfolio is like going on a journey without a defined destination in mind: which is time wasting and inefficient. The purpose of this portfolio is to present in clear terms the necessary steps that should taken in carrying out a civil engineering project. The scope of the portfolio is broad and technical, to the extent that it lays out the significant operations that could never be overlooked during the execution of a civil project. 　　　　　 Contents of the portfolio This management portfolio contains the following significant management systems highlighted below: Health Safety and Environmental Management: This management aspect deals with all issues related to the safety of the personnel involved in the course of executing the project. It involves setting up safety measures and abiding by all the safety rules and regulations on the site of operation. It also explains the environmental impacts of the project. For example, the construction of London 2012 Olympic Stadium would require that a great deal of time and resources must be pumped into the project to make it safe and healthy for hundreds of thousands of people that would grace the occasion. Quality Management System: Every civil engineering project requires a great deal of quality management strategies. These include technical management, project management and operations management. For the fact that British Airways Eye project succeeded means that the personnel, including the engineers and workers performed in conformity to laid-down standards and Quality assurance principles.  Commercial and Financial Systems: The essence of drawing up a management portfolio for any project is to make sure such a project ends up being cost-effective; Hence, commercial and financial systems monitor how money change hands during the period of carrying out the project, and it reveals how financial wastage could be practically avoided. Wimbledon Stadium almost ended up a disaster because of financial and commercial errors; for which the finally completed project cost more than it was initially projected. Human Resources Management: This is the backbone of all other management systems in the sense that it manages the human aspect of the operation. Without proper management of people that would work on this project, it is clear that such a project has failed from the onset. The success of the construction of Westfield Mega Mall might have indicated how perfectly the human resources managers have worked assiduously to make it end that way. Main body Undoubtedly, all projects require articulate harnessing of all various management strategies that are needed to make this operation successful. In the light of this, the following management systems would be analysed pragmatically to indicate how each area of Project management structures would be handled: A. Explaining Human Resources Management How successful a civil engineering project or operation is reveals a lot about how tactically the Human Resources Management has been handled. In other words, if the HR Management fails right from the beginning; the project stands a thin chance of survival or succeeding (Clark 1993). Hence, HR Management entails several processes, starting from resourcing the kind of strategies to adopt in designing the organisational and grading structures for the prospective employees. Zweig (1991) reckons that setting up an efficient organisational design is similar to establishing a solid framework on which other sections of HR management would later rest on: This involves describing in clear language the terms and conditions; recruitment procedures; induction, training and development of the employees; establishment of performance management and discipline; handling annual and sick leaves; apportioning the right rewards to the employees; giving periodical counseling; organising pensions services; and carrying out restructuring to prevent redundancy (Zweig 1991). Complete Analysis of Human Resources Management in Civil Engineering It is important to analyse step-by-step the concept of Human Resources Management as it pertains to the execution of a civil engineering project. The following processes are inevitable activities a HR manager must be aware of in order to do a great job of managing the people working on a project.  Resourcing : This implies discovering some effective approaches to handling all matters pertaining to Human Resources Management for a particular civil engineering project. The new-age systems have made it possible to resource for qualified personnel across borders and local territories. Many civil constructions have been undertaken using the resources available outside the United Kingdom. Engineers, site managers and other workers have been reported to collaborate with other professionals within the European Union bloc, or even farther to the United States and Canada.  Organisational Design and Grading Structures : The entire operation should be broken down into several but related processes. And it is helpful to delegate individual personnel to man the activities going on in their designated areas. There would sub-managers, field inspectors, resident engineers, administration and accounting personnel, site engineers etc Grading structures that would guide the issue of allotting grades to the employees concerned must be established. Grading system accords each personnel its designated authourity. A sensitive project like civil construction requires judicious use of administrative power to harness both the quality and efforts of the workers so as to produce a worthwhile product. In order words, if there is lack of authority, there would be chaos, countless errors and the production of poor quality.  Terms and conditions : Setting the appropriate terms and conditions for the employees working on a project is very significant. This will clearly spell out the responsibilities of both the employers and the employees. This will prevent any misunderstanding that may occur in the course of working on the project. Some of the problems that commonly crop up include salary argument, unclear description of individual responsibility, conflict resolution methods, statements about the leave of absence and for what conditions and other employment issues, like laws and litigations.  Recruitment: HR managers are always confronted with this delicate part of their jobs: recruitment. Hiring the rightly qualified professionals for a civil engineering project goes beyond mere qualification; it requires displaying an ample experience in the field of work. Initial forms application should be encouraged, so that prospective employees could fill in both their educational and experience information. This would be followed by interviews. And successful applicants should be given contract; a legal document that describes the terms and nature of their employment: whether it is full-time, part-time, temporary or permanent. When recruiting, it is important to pay attention to the necessary Employment Law. There are Employment Rights Acts of 1996 and 2002 that strongly support equal pay, maternity and paternity adoption issues, dispute resolution, and handling dispute and grievances. The Employment Acts also discourage discrimination based on race, sex, disability and age. Since the incident of September 11 in the United States, some unscrupulous employers have begun to discriminate workers based on their religions/religious affiliations. This act of polarized discrimination would be dangerous for construction firm that requires diverse workers that are able and qualified to work successfully on a project, irrespective of what they believe in.  Induction: This signifies relationship between HR managers and the new employees by the way of introducing them to the workplace guidelines. Further positive interactions between the two groups would lead to high performance rate. Well-inducted employees are likely to cause little or no trouble in the process of carrying out their statutory assignments. But aloofness on the part of the management or senior staff often create a gap that might not add quality to the overall project under execution.  Training and development: New employees would be duly trained so as to be familiar with their new set of responsibilities in the execution of the project at hand. They would be made to participate in seminars, workshops and lectures that explain several issues relating to engineering works: for example, Industry Personal Safety Track (PST) and Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS), to encourage their development. The new employees would learn about PPC Equipment, and would be supported by computing and other communication systems that would make their duties effective. Involving inter-personal relationship education into the training would go a long way to solving any future conflicts and fights that may ensue among the workers. It has been identified that when such education is not incorporated, the managers would regret it later when they wasted quality time to resolve disagreements among the workers.  Rewards and Performance Enhancement: Appropriate salaries/wages would be allotted to the employees. Pensions services that would cater for them after retirement would be set up. And they would receive regular counseling that would keep them abreast of developmental information. Disciplinary actions are necessary to keep them performing optimally. And whenever redundancy emerges, restructuring may be used to keep only the efficient workers. Though improper restructuring may create problems among the remaining workers since have enjoyed good relationships with some of their colleagues that may have been affected by the process. Employees should be given fair hearing and their sides of the story be accorded due consideration.  Leadership: The best approach to managing people on a project is by laying good examples as a leader: be it as a manager, supervisor etc. Applying John Adair’s Action-Centered Leadership model, HR managers could concentrate on their major task of managing people. Action-centered leadership (Adair) TASKS INDIVIDUALS TEAM LEADER AIMS FOR HERE The kind of leadership trait a construction project requires is all encompassing: this means, the managers must be ready and willing to carry all employees along irrespective of their positions or ranks. Staying aloof would only create a communication gap between the managers and the employees. In this situation, it is impossible to pass across smoothly information that are needed to make the execution of the project a success. New procedures to improve Human Resources Management The use of cutting-edge information technology will certainly improve the passage of practical communication among various classes of employees. And this would encourage efficiency and reduce errors arising from inconclusive instructions from the project managers to the site managers, and to other employees involved in the project. There are software that could encourage good rapport among all arms of the employees working on a project. These software would assist the system of channeling useful and pragmatic information from one end of the process to the other. Workers should be advised to have a new lifestyle that their new corporate culture demands. It is always difficult to accomplish it, but it is not impossible. It may take a great deal of time before it could make a positive impact. B. Explaining Commercial and Financial Systems Every civil engineering project requires efficient commercial and financial systems. Commercial aspect deals with the issues about commercial contracts: what kind of contract to adopt, and which standard to use (Kent 2004). This also explains what types of clauses to insert into the contracts. The responsibilities of the core constituents of the contract are clearly spelt out. In a similar vein, the idea of cost-effectiveness strongly encourages the principle of financial system in civil engineering. This aspect deals with the project’s budgeting, financial control, financial management, costing issues and other matters that concerned the exchange of money or other financial instruments during the execution of a project (Dale and Plunkett 1999). Complete Analysis of Commercial and Financial Systems in civil engineering (a) Commercial contract: This is a legal document that binds both the contractor and the client together. This is important because it explains, in understandable clauses, the general issues, the contractor’s main responsibilities, time allocated for the project execution, project testing and defects, payment structures, transfer of title, analysing risks and the necessary insurance policy to cover them, and in case of discontinuation, it also explains project termination terms. It is advisable that issues with the landowners must be taken seriously and resolved before the commencement of a commercial construction project. There are instances when a project was almost completed, and this ugly issue reared its head. Many commercial construction projects have been stopped abruptly by litigations from the unsettled landowners, which were fighting improper transfer of titles. (b) Financial control: Proper Financial management would lead to cost-effectiveness in the course of project execution. This implies that financial control is essential in the areas of project budgeting, financial measurement and cost value reconciliation. It is here the following questions of cost are raised: how much would this project cost? How much is the cost of materials, labour, plant, sub-contractors, and other charges? Has the project being over- or under-valued? What happens if the project turns out to be more expensive than previously estimated? Financial control manages the process of money transfer: from the client to the contractors; and from the contractors to sub-contractors. Executing a construction project without proper accounting would make it impossible to detect any over-spending or excesses. New procedures to improve the commercial and Financial Systems The use of e-banking would definitely facilitate the transfer of money and prevent the occurrence of fund unavailability that some projects run into whenever banking system is overwhelmed with financial transaction (Dale and Plunkett 1999). It has also been discovered budget fragmentation, which arises between the main contractor and sub-contract isn’t cost-effective (Morris 1994). Therefore, a broad budgeting would cut off financial wastage and make the project’s execution profitable for both the contractors and the client. C. Explaining Quality Management System To guarantee a high-quality project, the principles of Quality Management System must be applied in the course of the project’s execution (Grigg, Criswell & American Society of Civil Engineers, 2001). Quality Management Systems affect these three unique areas: Technical Management; Project Management and Operations Management. Project Management is the process through which all applications, methods and techniques are utilised during the execution of a project with the expectation of achieving optimal success visible in the quality of the finished project, the cost, and its durability (Morris 1994). Project Management involves strategic approaches to solving all problems relating to how a project could be successfully executed (Twort and Rees 2004). According to Morris (1994), the following are the four significant factors that affect project management:  Project definition: what kind of project does the client wants?  Project objectives: what are the main objectives for executing this project? Why does the client want it done?  Standards: working to standards often guarantee quality.  Technical requirements: What are the technical requirements for this particular project? Technical Management entails identifying all the necessary technical issues that would be applied while executing the project. Are they compatible with the current standards of operation? If yes, do the techniques lead to cost-effectiveness? Operation Management involves setting up a design that guides the total operations occurring on a site. The essence of this is to guarantee overall quality in the completed project (Grigg, Criswell & American Society of Civil Engineers, 2001). Complete Analysis of Quality Management System in civil engineering (a) Client issues: For a project to be successfully completed, and to be of high quality, the contractors must work co-operatively with the client. As a result of this interrelationship, it would be possible to establish the client’s objectives and priorities, and explain the client’s roles. Once these two key issues have been addressed, this could be followed by studying the elements in a client’s strategy. Elements in a Client’s Strategy Project brief CLIENT Organisation Procurement Control system Once the client’s side of the business has been concluded, the contractor could design the project organisation, select and appoint project team members and set up communication mechanisms to harness all resources together. Quality Assurance: To maintain high standard, several analytical techniques would be employed to properly analyse how efficient the project’s execution has been. Examples of these analyses include but not limited to PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique), SWOT Analysis, presenting Gantt Charts, Risk Analysis, Cost/Benefit Analysis and Forced Field Analysis. New Procedures to improve Quality Management System Ongoing communication between the client and the contractors would be helpful, as this would iron out issues that may have escaped the attention of both parties. Modern quality assurance mechanisms should be employed to continuously guarantee high quality, cost-effectiveness and durability of the concerned project. D. Explaining Health Safety and Environmental Management. It is almost impossible to totally prevent some operations hazards in the course of executing a civil engineering project. Davies and Tomasin (1996) explain that there is a danger of both foreseeable and unforeseeable accidents. These could be in forms of a fire outbreak, mechanical accidents, natural disaster, artificial dangers, system collapse and so on. The importance of establishing Health Safety and Environmental Management is to safeguard the activities of the workers on construction sites by exposing them to minimal hazards (James, Great Britain Health and Safety Executive & Institution of Civil Engineers 1996). Complete Analysis of Health Safety and Environmental Management in civil engineering Application of Health Standards: Using Health Standards for all operations on a construction site serves a unique purpose of reducing the occurrence of accidents on the site. The employees should be taught but simple and intense Health Safety procedures: like wearing hard hats while working to prevent head injuries; avoid using welding instrument in a volatile atmosphere to prevent fire outbreak: Faults reporting: The employees would be encouraged to quickly report any faults they have discovered in the system. This would prompt quick fixing or spark complete re-building. This would prevent the impending accidents from happening. Procedures to improve Health and Environmental Safety Management The use of modern technology could drastically reduce Health and Environmental Safety issues. For instance, the development of weather-forecasting systems could announce the looming dangers of natural disasters hours before it occurred. And warning system or alarm could also alert the employees to run away from the scene of fire outbreak or building collapse. Document Control There should be a system that would handle all the documentation processes, like installing some software that could connect and record all the activities going on the construction site. Not only gathering the necessary information, but computerizing them for future projections and understanding how the project is doing: records are useful in the financial and commercial department to estimate if the project has been running according to a set financial inputs or may end up being a wasteful project. The activities of the engineers and managers could be fully understood when analysing their activities on the project. Recommendations The operational procedures should be followed systemically. And the operating accounts should be balanced at the end of each month to ascertain if the project is gulping more funds than forecasted. The activities of the personnel involved in the construction should be subjected to routine analysis in order to detect any human errors that may have been committed in the course of the project execution. Conclusions It is important to harness all the operations highlighted above before a construction project could be successfully executed. However, there are obvious challenges the civil engineer in charge may have to go through: like what are the motivational levels of personnel involved in the project? How could the project’s financial concerns could be properly estimated to prevent any wastage of resources? And what are the legal challenges the civil contract may pose on the civil engineer. Following the outlines of organizational operations detailed above, it is possible to efficiently oversee a civil project from its onset to its final completion. References 1. Twort, A and Rees G 2004, Civil Engineering Project Management: Project Management, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford. 2. Clark, J 1993, Human Resource Management and Technical Change, SAGE, Thousand Oaks, CA. 3. Zweng, M 1991, Human Resources Management: The Complete Guidebook for Design Firms, John Wiley and Sons, New York. 4. Kent, M 2004, Standard handbook for civil engineers, McGraw-Hill, New York. 5. Morris, G 1994, The Management of Projects, Thomas Telford, London. 6. Dale, B & Plunkett, J 1999, Quality Costing, Gower Publishing, Ltd., Surrey, United Kingdom. 7. James, M, Great Britain Health and Safety Executive & Institution of Civil Engineers 1996, Risk Management in Civil, Mechanical and Structural Engineering: Proceedings of the Conference Organized by the Health and Safety Executive in Co-operation with the Institution of Civil Engineers, and Held in London on 22 February 1995, Thomas Telford, London. 8. Davies, J & Tomasin, K 1996, Construction Safety Handbook, Thomas Telford, London. 9. Grigg, S, American Society of Civil Engineers & Criswell, E 2001, Civil Engineering Practice in the Twenty-first Century: Knowledge and Skills for Design and Management, ASCE Publications, Reston, Virginia. Read More