The construction business in the UK involves taking big risks over long periods of time. A given project might involve the investment of significant amounts of money, energy and work. Among the most important workers, therefore, are the people whose job is to analyse and manage this risk. If this job isn’t done effectively, it’ll have ripple effects that spread throughout the project. In other words, if the managers on a given construction project aren’t competent, then it’s likely that the project will fail.
As such, these professionals tend to find themselves under massive pressure. It’s vital that they’re able to cope with the burden, and effectively manage the workers beneath them. Let’s look at five strategies through which this might be accomplished.
Five strategies for a successful project
Planning
It’s easy to think of the planning stage as a period of preparation that unfolds before the real work actually starts – but planning is actually something that should happen continuously throughout the project. Plans should be flexible enough to be revised and developed in response to onsite goings-on. A lack of flexibility often leads to projects going over budget and over time.
Budgeting
By the same token, keeping track of your budget, and your payroll, is an ongoing task. The most important duty of a construction project manager is to monitor costs throughout the project. This means materials, wages, and equipment rental. Having the right team of administrative staff might help you to do this much more easily. Investing in things like builder’s insurance might help you to limit your costs in the long term – and to avoid potentially disastrous risks.
Communication
If you aren’t able to effectively exchange information with everyone working on a project, then friction is almost inevitable. That means that you’ll need to be able to distribute directives to everyone on the ground, as well as to the various stakeholders in a given project. But it also means allowing those on the ground to pass information back to you. Workers have a unique insight into the situation at any given time, and an effective manager will make it easy for this insight to be passed up to decision-makers through open-door policies throughout the company.
There are technological, as well as cultural, methods of creating this environment. You might have a digital calendar, for example, where schedules can be regularly posted and updated, so that everyone is constantly kept apprised of developments.
Observation
As well as making it easy for information to be passed to you, you should also make a point of observing the site. Make sure that you are familiar with the site and how it should be working, so that you can contrast that with how things actually work in practice.
Automation
The days of robots doing the physical labour onsite aren’t quite with us just yet. However, they can play a crucial role in administrative tasks like email-answering and report delivery. Automation might also make it easier for workers to cut down their paperwork, and thereby deliver more information, more often, without any corresponding loss in productivity.
