Write a report explaining the importance of planning and scheduling in construction projects. The report will include one or more famous construction projects that were adversely affected by poor planning and scheduling. Major lessons learned should also be discussed in the report.
Answer:
Introduction
Construction projects are complex in nature in terms of their execution operations as well as their management. Complexity of construction projects has shown delay in the delivery of construction projects along with a hike in the cost of project. This problem of delaying in the delivery of project on time has been recorded as one of the most frequent problems in the industry. Studies in the same field have shown that contractor’s delaying the project is quite common (Abidemi, Akhter, Malik, Khwaja, & Mehmood, 2018). This report provides importance of proper planning and scheduling of a construction project to make it completed on time and saving both the money as well as market value of an organization.
Project planning and scheduling
Aftermath of delays in the industry affect both the people associated with the project directly or indirectly as well as organization. This delay in the project is a serious issue for business owners as they have to face the anger of people along with a loss of their organization’s market value (Braglia, & Frosolini, 2014). To overcome this problem a proper planning and scheduling of the construction projects is essential to execute the construction work more efficiently as well as effectively enhancing the organization value and business (Fobiri, Adjei, & Orgen, 2017).
Time management which an important element of planning includes three steps as: Planning, Scheduling, and Tracking & controlling.
Project planning
Project planning is the first step of any construction project as the construction projects start from the initial stage of planning. Planning and scheduling of a project provides a plan that is essential for an efficient execution of construction projects (Heravi, Coffey, & Trigunarsyah, 2015). This is all about dealing with the time management to complete the project on time. This includes planning for every task that is associated with the project whether it is related to the finance, machinery, human resources, or project activity deadline.
Scheduling
Scheduling is a process of arranging different activities or tasks in such a way that they make an effective execution of work. In construction projects different tasks or activities are interrelated with each other therefore an efficient arrangement is essential to complete the project on time (Mubarak, 2015).
In real world construction project execution there are so many examples showing failure of the whole project because of poor planning and scheduling. Some of these examples are: Three George Dam China, Ryugyong Hotel North Korea, The MOSE Project of Venice, Sagrada Familia Cathedral Barcelona and many more. All these projects are best examples showing importance of planning and scheduling in construction projects. These examples are showing an overall result of poor planning and scheduling.
Three George Dam in Hubai (China) was an impressive effort of Chinese government to improve upon the nature. In this effort the governments wanted to knock mountain to build new cities by rerouting the existing rivers for power generation and supplying water to the population of new cities. This projhect was announced in 1992, then-Vice Premier Zou Jiahua told people’s congress about the project cost which was estimated around $8.35 billion. But as a result of poor planning and scheduling project had started spiralling the budget, as the government have to provide homes to 1.3 million people, affected by the flood created by the rerouting of rivers (Qing, et al., 2016). By the rime of project completion in 2006, the total price tag of the project reached to $37 billion. This was a big failure of project planning of such a world class project.
Another example of similar failure is Ryungyong Hotel project of North Korea. Nation has not provided any project of such a luxury tourist spot for outsiders. In 1987, then-director Kim II-Sung broke the ground and planned for such a luxury hotel that can attract more and more tourists. This project of 105 storey hotel project, named Ryungyong Hotel as a bitter rivalry action against the South Korea’s hosting the summer Olympics of 1988. This was a three winged triangular tower structure made of glass and concrete. Then after in 1990s the $750 million structure has languished in unfinished condition ever since. This shows that poor planning of construction projects may lead to such a huge loss for the organization as well as the industry.
Learning lessons
The above discussed project failures have left lessons for the industry showing importance of project planning and scheduling. The former project shows that poor planning of a project makes it delay in time and resulting in increasing the budget required to complete the delayed project abruptly. From this example, industry has learnt that project planning helps an organization in completing its project on time, as well make them cost effective for business point of view. The later example of Ryungyong Hotel project languished for ever since has taught the industry that project planning can make a project delayed forever. Such examples show the failure of all the stockholders of the project (Papke-Shields, & Boyer-Wright, 2017). As the success of such a huge project is interrelated to each and every stockholder, failure of such projects will be considered a failure of individual stockholder making a negative impact on their individual organization.
Conclusion
The above discussion concludes that project planning and scheduling is very important especially for construction projects. Examples discussed in the report made it clear that in construction industry poor planning may lead the project as well as organization fail completely. To avoid such failures managements has to make proper planning and scheduling of the project even before starting the project. This action of management can make a key change in the project execution taking it from failure to the success.
References
Abidemi, A. M., Akhter, S., Malik, M. F., Khwaja, M. G., & Mehmood, S. (2018). Causes of Variation Orders and Their Effect on Building Construction Projects. International Journal of Modern Management Sciences, 7(1), pp. 1-12.
Braglia, M., & Frosolini, M. (2014). An integrated approach to implement project management information systems within the extended enterprise. International Journal of Project Management, 32(1), pp. 18-29.
Fobiri, G., Adjei, K. O., & Orgen, N. K. (2017). An Investigation into Protective Measures used for Uncompleted Residential Buildings in Ghana. In International Conference on Applied Science and Technology Conference Proceedings 1(1), pp. 281-291.
Heravi, A., Coffey, V., & Trigunarsyah, B. (2015). Evaluating the level of stakeholder involvement during the project planning processes of building projects. International Journal of Project Management, 33(5), pp. 985-997.
Mubarak, S. A. (2015). Construction project scheduling and control. US: John Wiley & Sons.
Papke-Shields, K. E., & Boyer-Wright, K. M. (2017). Strategic planning characteristics applied to project management. International Journal of Project Management, 35(2), pp. 169-179.
Qing, D., Thibodeau, J. G., Williams, M. R., Dai, Q., Yi, M., & Topping, A. R. (2016). The River Dragon Has Come!: Three Gorges Dam and the Fate of China's Yangtze River and Its People: Three Gorges Dam and the Fate of China's Yangtze River and Its People. UK: Routledge.
