Managing a collaborative preconstruction planning process

This research is concerned with improving the planning process in large construction projects where the management and planning of the preconstruction planning process itself is a significant and complex task. Preconstruction planning in the construction sector has become a complex task requiring substantial collaboration, with ad-hoc teams (especially from design and construction) created to bring all the project resources involved together in a timely manner, to ensure a construction project is completed effectively and efficiently. This, combined with the iterative nature of the planning process, has challenged even the best companies in the industry. Three major weaknesses in current practice were identified in the research: first, the planning preconstruction planning process is heavily reliant on a planner’s experience (i.e. a planner develops a new programme of a preconstruction planning through personal determination of the planning tasks and their precedence, starting afresh at the beginning of each project). For large projects this is not only time-consuming but subject to the limitations of the planner’s knowledge and experience, often resulting in simplistic programmes in which many of the dependencies are ignored. Second, guesses (i.e. estimates) are frequently made in the planning process, which neither the initial planner nor the downstream planner will later check. They are usually ignored and left until the execution of the plan, when the problems reveal themselves. Finally, the current techniques for the management of preconstruction planning, such as the critical path method and bar charts, cannot account for the iterative nature of the planning process that requires estimations to be made and work to be redone until a satisfactory solution is developed. As a result, it may be said that preconstruction planning is currently managed poorly. It can be argued that, if preconstruction planning is to be undertaken effectively, it must be better managed and planned. In this research, a generic preconstruction planning process model was developed together with a method to support the management of preconstruction planning, by interviews with two academics and ten planners. This generic model of preconstruction planning was subsequently validated through three live case study projects in China, which also involved the application and evaluation of the dependency structure matrix (DSM) technique to create project programmes. The case studies revealed a range of benefits focused around three main outcomes. First, the generic preconstruction planning process model, visualised by a variant of IDEF0 notation, helped overcome the first weakness of current practice by eliminating many subjective decisions. This was achieved by generically representing the tasks involved and the information flow in the planning preconstruction planning process of any construction projects in a consistent, re-usable manner. Second, the optimal sequence of planning activities can be determined, when the generic preconstruction planning process model is analysed in a DSM, This could not only minimise the inherent iteration, but substantially reduce the amount of estimation required. More importantly, all these previously-made estimations are highlighted, enabling further tracking and management. Third, the optimal sequence of activities can be represented in a bar chart to form an optimal programme of construction planning, and this programme can be further integrated with the programmes of other stages of a project such as design, procurement, manufacturing and construction, thus forming an overall project management programme. Overall, the response of the project staff on the case study projects was very positive: they found the approach interesting, thought it had potential and some were interested in pursuing its application.