Life Cycle Management Of Construction Projects

Phases of Construction Project Life Cycle

Discuss about the Life Cycle Management of Construction Projects.

Life cycle of any project is a sequence of different phases that the particular project goes through. Theses phase breakdown the whole project in different structure according to the type project and needs of the management (Guo et al., 2010). Number and sequence of these phases is determined by the management of project and several other factors associated with the project like, nature of project and size of the project. In general there are four project life cycle phases but in case on construction project there are five phases of the project life cycle (Iqbal, 2015).

1. Project conception and introduction: First phase of a construction project is to decide whether the project is feasible or not in the surroundings of the proposed location.
2. Project definition or planning: Second phase includes a perfect designing and planning the strategies for individual task or stage of the project.
3. Project execution or implementation: This phase consists of the execution work in which physical existence of the project starts appearing and executes the whole work in a pre-planned manner.
4. Project control or performance check: In this phase management has to look for the preciseness of the work execution at the site.
5. Project closure: this is the last phase of a construction project in which project closing formalities are made by the management and announces the closing of project.

In the first phase of construction project investors check the feasibility of project for a particular location. Investors have to analyse different factors associated with feasibility of project like, cost of project, meeting the deadline, taking permissions from the authorities and several others.

Second phase of any construction project is most critical phase. In this phase engineers design the whole project and its components. Also they plan for the execution of their design to make an effective and efficient execution according to the priority of different tasks. Designing of the project is the base of execution as the whole project depends on effective and sustainable design. There no tolerance for any mistake in designing process of a construction project.

The execution phase consists of the implementation of the design of project. In execution phase the project starts taking physical shape in real world. This phase involves the typical construction work as the project construction is done in this phase. In this phase all the team members perform their individual tasks assigned to them.

While executing the project precautions are needed to be taken in order to avoid any mismatch with the design part. Similarly fourth phase of a construction project is all about monitoring the execution work at site to meet the designed requirements of the project. This phase is important to make an effective and efficient execution of the work. Some key indicators of the performance like, cost effectiveness, quality and deadline are used to determine the variation of these factors from practical work to that of the designed or planned goals of the project.

The last phase of the project is the final closure of work but it is most important phase to evaluate the performances, document and learn new findings during the work execution. In this phase a final meeting of team members leading by the project manager take place. In this meeting success of the project is celebrated and valuable team members are awarded for their excellent work efforts (Lee et al., 2009).

Risks Associated with Construction Projects

Construction projects are associated with different type of risks like, technical risks, environmental risks, logistical risks, management related risks, financial risks, and socio-political risks. All possible risks associated with the respective phase of the project life cycle of construction projects are as following

The beginning or introduction phase of a construction project there are lot of socio-political risks as, if the project fits in the rules and regulations or by-laws of the location, its impact on the social environment, and permissions to be taken by the development authorities before starting a construction project.

Designing or planning of the project, has risks like, error in the design, mismatching of two consecutive activities, and risks of not following design criteria. Risks associated with any construction project in this particular phase of the project life cycle are most critical and sometimes these risks may harm the whole project (Iqbal et al., 2015).

In third phase of the project that is implementation or project execution has many hazardous risks like, safety hazards which may lead to an accident or injuries to the workers on site, labour shortage, damage or theft to tools or equipment, and occurrence of natural disaster during the project execution.

Fourth phase on construction project, project control or performance check is critical to make a quality work delivery of the project. During this phase some risks may arise to harm the project. These risks associated with this phase of the projects may be such as, poor execution of designed work, poor material supply, and lack of precision. These risks can make a huge difference in the work quality which may affect the organization’s market value or image.

Risks associated with every construction project are very similar in some context but still project managers have to analyse the unique risks associated with their particular project. This risk analysis for any construction project involve some specific steps such as, identifying the risk, managing risk, avoiding risk, transfer the risk, mitigate the risk, and accept the risk.

Identification of the risk is to be done as early as possible to control their impact on the project. To identify risks of construction projects managers has to organize some brainstorming session with the members of project team. Goal of these sessions is to identify as many risks as possible. After these sessions risks are shortlisted on the basis of their occurrence and impact on the project. in construction projects general risks are prioritized as following

Identifying and Prioritizing Risks

In this order these risks are analysed to understand their scope and impact on the project. Design risks are important as they can affect the whole project and its execution and once these mistakes are implemented in the execution work mitigating these risks is quite difficult. Similarly planning risks may lead to additional risks like improper execution of the work, may lead to miss the deadlines set for the project. On the other hand project execution risks have some time to occur therefor they can be dealt next to these two types of risks. And lastly the natural disaster occurring are risks with more uncertainty. This makes them of less priority but still these risks are important to analyse and control these. In this way these risks can be identified and prioritize to control and mitigate in order to safeguard the project from all these risks.

In order to prioritize risks associated with construction projects matrix method can be adopted for prioritizing these risks. At this stage of prioritizing the risks managers need to get the statement of factors which are likely to occur throughout the project life cycle. Most frequent method to identify the risk priority for construction projects is matrix method. In this a matrix is prepared for risks of each phase, this matrix presentation is called Ishikawa’s diagram or risk register as shown below (Dziadosz & Rejment, 2015)

In this process simplest technique, using both the qualitative and quantitative variable, a list prioritizing the risks is prepared. Prioritization of risks using this technique is given in the table below

Once these risks are identified and prioritized their control and mitigation has to be done with some strategic planning. This strategic planning requires managers to analyse the risks and find alternative in order to mitigate these risks. In a strategic approach as the results are obtained by the qualitative analysis are better than the results obtained from other quantitative techniques (Azhar, 2011). In this order the risks of the first phase including the social environment impact, breach of bylaws, and chances of permission declinations are dealt with a proper planning of the project and managers has to cross check their project proposal to make sure that I would not impact on any of the risk factors. Risks of the second phase i.e. poor design, poor planning and all are need to be dealt by the experts in their respective fields. Risks related to design need expert assistance and planning risks require additional experience to deal with them. Other risks related to execution phase and project control phase are need to be dealt according to the situations and resource availability at the time of risk occurrence. In this way controlling or mitigating these risks associated with individual phases of the construction project is possible and even necessary to make the project successful.

References

Azhar, S., 2011. Building Information Modelling (BIM): Trends, Benefits, Risks, and Challenges for the AEC Industry. Leadership and Management in Engineering, 11(3), pp.241-52.

Dziadosz, A. & Rejment, M., 2015. Risk analysis in construction project – chosen methods. Procedia Engineering, 122, pp.258-65.

Guo, H.L., Li, H. & Skitmore, M., 2010. Life-Cycle Management of Construction Projects Based on Virtual. Journal of Management in Engineering, 26(1), pp.41-47.

Iqbal, S., 2015. Risk Management in Construction Projects. Technological and Economic Development of Economy, 21(1), pp.65-78.

Iqbal, S. et al., 2015. Risk Management in Construction Projects. Technological and Economic Development of Economy, 21(1), pp.65-78.

Lee, E., Yongtae, P. & Jong, G.S., 2009. Large Engineering Project Risk Management using a Bayesian Belief Newtork. Expert Systems with Applications, 36(3), pp.2880-5887.

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