Poon, S W and Price, A D F (1999) Decisions made on construction sites. In: Hughes, W (ed.) Proceedings of 15th Annual ARCOM Conference, 15-17 September 1999, Liverpool, UK.
Abstract
The decision-making process is critical to the success of any construction project. Construction personnel have to make decisions on a daily basis and must be able to justify these decisions. Wrong decisions can be costly in terms of time, quality, cost and relationships. Effective time-management requires decisions to be assessed in terms of urgency and importance, and dealt with accordingly. This paper discusses the results of a survey that was undertaken to investigate the characteristics of decisions taken on construction sites in Hong Kong. The results demonstrated that important decisions were mainly concerned with technical, engineering and financial aspects. Experience and knowledge were found to be the main contributing factors behind taking decisions. The results also revealed that one third of decisions were made within an hour and another 40 % were made on the same day. Most of the important decisions taken had produced satisfactory results but these could have been improved if more time had been available for collecting relevant information or acquiring experience. However, over 40 % of these decisions could have been avoided through adequate preparatory work such as a complete design, better co-ordination and better planning.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction sites; decision-making; Hong Kong |
| Index terms: | decision-making, construction project, construction site, decision-making process, Hong Kong, survey, construction personnel |
| Subjects: | production management, workforce, data collection methods, decision analysis, Geography, work location |
| Topics: | Risk Management, Human Resources, Research Practice, Site Management, Project Management, Geographical Context |
| Descriptive scope: | 2 PE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here