Projects to transform ideas into realities, to meet market demands in a time bounded.
In the case of the construction projects involved professionals and companies linked to the architecture, engineering, and other disciplines. Each project has a “life” until it produces a deliverable product or service.
To achieve the best results on your project Manager it should be a separate figure to reinforce their role, to be able to confront interests, visions, ideas, ways of doing things, methodology, etc, ensuring a fair treatment to the different parties of the project.
For a greater freedom and efficiency in the process, to fulfill their role should be to separate the manager of those who design and those who build.
Whoés involved in a construction project?
The “actors” of a project are those participants that interact with the original idea: the client (as a promoter and manager of the idea), the designer (who begins to interpret the original idea), contractors and sub-contractors, suppliers, agents, financing and alternately appear specialized advisors (the study of soils, structural, sanitary, electrical, thermal, computer science, electronic security, home automation, renewable energy, etc).
It is highly probable that works like the pyramids of Egypt or the great Wall of China have been the subject of project management. Today, we have a specific methodology, which, coupled with the expertise and know-how's own Manager make this tool more effective and more efficient results.
The PMI Project Management Institute proposed good practices for the processes in which decomposes a project.
What is the difference between the Management of a construction management?
The director of works have as one of their main responsibilities verify, in each stage of the construction, the design embodied is transformed into the final product agreed, with an emphasis on quality.
One of the keys to understand what is the difference between the Construction management and the Management of a Project, it consists of the early integration and simultaneous of all the actors mentioned above.
What is included in the management?
The services Project Management include the specific practices of the construction, but they can also add value to those other activities that are required to complete the project in the agreed time with the agreed quality, the assigned budget and the improvements that can be introduced, taking care of job security, between the main variables.
The team manager concentrates, plans and distributes all the action in the “life” of a Project. This means considering not only the aspects of coordination of the various technical tasks, but that adds to the responsibilities and roles of the management of the Work, all those other variables that affect the contracts that make up a Project and that must be monitored.
The team manager will have the responsibility of ensuring that, seeking the care of the construction technique of the Project, not to weaken its quality strategic in terms of economic feasibility, financial, legal, commercial, market, etc
Also, accompanying the client in consideration of factors related to:
The management (business, financial, market assessment).
The pre-construction and plans (preparation of tender documents and specifications called for competitive price public or private, design coordination, coordination of engineering, armed contracts and subcontracts, supply of materials and critical supplies, equipment purchases, track production).
The building and its practices (approvals, tasks, tests and approvals of materials and techniques used, verification of certificates, clearances, and schedules of work, coordination of trades, enforcement of labour standards, health and safety at work, control of decrees, rules and regulations, receptions provisional and final).
There are different ways to make a management, with different formats in which the team Manager is involved, what can be done assuming full responsibility for a construction project or you can do it in a role of accompaniment of the customer, as a counterpart of the builder and designers contributing to the success of the project.
Many times this tool is used to run works without the presence of a main Contractor, and in that case, the team Manager will be to lead and co-ordinate the different subcontracts, such as piling, excavation, submuraciones, reinforced concrete structure, assemblies, sub-endings, etc
Why am I talking about Management?
I had the opportunity to lead, in Algeria, a project of a power plant hybrid solar/gas 120 MW located in the middle of the desert to 500 km to the south of the Mediterranean sea, where it was applied this methodology and he managed a complex project in an environment no less complex, by the circumstances of the place, the distance to major cities, and the complexity of the construction market in algeria.
In that project to be hired independently to several companies that were in charge of different sectors of the work, movements of soil, reinforced concrete for foundations, buildings, erection of boiler, installation of turbines, installation of solar parks, etc
The technical team that led the project had a staff of Uruguay, Mexico, Spain, and algeria, among others, acting physically on site and at a distance.
Its main tasks were:
- Development of engineering design
- Permanent planning and monitoring
- Supplies and equipment critical
- Human resource management
- Supervision of the civil works and erection
Lead the project had many challenges, being one of the main management of the multicultural, taking permanent actions to meet the deadlines set out in the planning and introducing new ways of managing technical teams.
Alejandro Skocilich, civil engineer, partner Faktor Uruguay.