Chapter 2.02.1 Construction Planning "Tf you fail to plan, you are bound to fail" — Planning is the most important constituent of the construction management. In the simplest sense planning is the mental process deciding about the future line of actions. It forms the basis for the project scope, schedule, resources, quality, risk, and integration Planning is done to — Eliminate or reduce uncertainty — Improve efficiency of the operations — Obtain better understanding of the objectives — Provide basis for monitoring and controlling. . . Objectives of planning * The main objective of planning of a work is to execute the project or work most economically in terms of money and time both. * The effective planning depends upon the following factors: — Proper design of each element of the project — Proper selection of plant and equipment — Proper arrangements of repair of plant and equipment at site — Procurement of required materials well in advance — Ensure employment of skilled and unskilled employees — To provide welfare schemes for the workers — To provide incentives for good workers — To arrange constant flow of funds in entire project duration — To provide required level of safety and compensations — Proper arrangements of communication and mobility in site2.2 Steps and Stages in Planning * Steps involved in planning — Identifying the likely problems to be encountered in the execution of the work and obtaining necessary information useful in the execution of the work. — Ascertaining alternative feasibility of execution of work and selection of the optimum plan — Fixing the time of starting the execution of work — Deciding the time of delivering the materials at site — Deciding the quantities and duration of various types of machines and equipment — Deciding the number of different types of labors for various works and duration of their employment — Estimation of financial help if needed — Estimation of the duration of completion of the work — Evaluation of the effectiveness of plan adoptedStages of planning + Usually the stages of planning are as follows: — Preplanning * Setting out objectives * Cost benefit analysis * Project go / no-go decision — Detailed planning * Detailed design and drawings + Specifications * Quantities calculation + WBS is done * Sequence and scheduling of the activities are done — Monitoring and controlling + In this phase, the progress of construction is monitored as per proposed scheduled. + Updating of schedule can be carried out according to the actual progress of work. * Preparation of the revised forecasts regarding the availability of various resources is done.Planning by the Client /Owner/Employer * Pre-tender stage planning — Clients sets clear objectives of the project — Client communicate the objectives to all the parties and stakeholders — After proper investigations of the project, client prepares quantity estimates and determines the quantum of money required for the completion of the work. — Take respective approval of the project from concerned authority — Selection of project team and project appraisal — Select the consultant — Bidding and contract award (Selection of Contractor) * Construction stage planning — Revision in objectives in responding unexpected events — Make site available for the contractor — Timely payment and settlement of claims — Keep the changes less — Update performance bond of the contractor — Timely decision * Post construc stage planning — Prepares project operation schedule — Prepares project maintenance schedule — Project ownershipPlanning by the Contractor * Pre tender stage planning * The planning undertaken by the contractor after receipt of tender notice and before submitting the bid is known as pre tender stage planning. Careful Study of tender documents and drawings to find out the quantities of each item of work Study of specifications and workout the detailed quantities of materials required for different items Determine the availability of construction materials at site or nearby site. Determine the method of work execution i.e. by labor or equipments Thorough study of site and site investigationsPlanning by the Contractor contd... * Construction stage planning * After the acceptance of the tender, the contractor further needs in-depth planning. This stage of planning is also known as contract planning. — Studying the alternative methods of construction and to decide about subcontracting — Working out detailed quantities of materials required and examine and fixing the methods of procurement and sources of them — Working out detailed about construction workforce like skilled and unskilled manpower — Working out details of plants, equipment their layout and repair & maintenance strategy — Planning for camp facilities, access, accommodations, site offices and layout — Planning for surveillance like proper lighting, ventilation, drinking water, sanitation, first aid treatment — Study interdependence of different items of works and fixing the sequence of them — Finalize the work program of each item of work and to decide the dates of their starting and completingPlanning by the Contractor contd. Post construction stage planning Demobilization of plants and equipment Demobilization of labors Clearance of materials inventory and its stock Handover the project to client in targeted date Responsible for the defect liability construction within its period2.4 Preparing Schedule Scheduling A construction schedule is a graphic representation which shows the phasing rate of construction with the starting and completing dates of each activity and the sequential relationship among various operations in a construction project. Use of scheduling * Following are the use of scheduling * The quantity of work involved, labor, material, equipment and money required at each stage of work can be determined by scheduling. * The actual progress of the work can be checked from time to time by scheduling * The project can be carried out in systematic manner by the use of schedulingClassification of scheduling Schedules can be classified into groups according to the requirements as follows: — Construction schedule — Materials schedule — Labor schedule — Equipment schedule — Financial schedule — Control schedule — Organizational schedule — Summary schedule Methods of scheduling Bar chart or Gantt charts Milestone charts Network analysisConstruction schedule and its preparation Before preparing construction schedule following information must be known — Various operations to be done in a particular project — Quantum of works to be done in each operation — Unit of measurement — Rate of progress of work with due allowance of weather conditions — Number of labors required — Number and types of plants and equipment required — Date of starting and completing the activity — Correlation between different operations The procedure of preparing construction schedule is as follows: — The work or project is divided into number of operations and their inter dependence or relationship is studied. After the careful study of their interdependence the sequence of operation is decided — The quantity of work involved in each operation is to be determined — The time required for the completion of each operation as well as the completion of total project is determined. This can be done by knowing the quantum of work involved and the rate2.5 Time Cost Trade- Off Project cost For any project total expenditure incurred in terms of man power, equipment, machinery and materials and time to achieve a particular goal is known as total cost of the project. The total sum of the project is the sum of two distinct costs. Direct cost Total cost Minimum cost + The cost of materials, equipment and money spent on man power form the direct cost. The direct costs of project are of major concern and behavior pattern of direct costs with time is of importance. Direct cost of a project depends on the completion time of project, but the variation is not linear. Indirect cost + The expenditures which cannot be allotted clearly to the individual activities of the project, but are assessed as a whole are called indirect costs. The indirect cost includes overhead charges, administrative and establishment _ charges, supervision charges, loss of revenue, loss in profit and penalty ete. Crash Optimum Normal duration — duration ~—_ durationDefinitions of Terms Normal time + The time usually allowed for an activity by the estimator is known as normal time. It is the standard time for that activity and is denoted by (Tn). Crash time + The minimum possible time in which an activity can be completed by deploying extra resources is known as crash time. Beyond the crash time the duration of an activity cannot be reduced or shortened by any amount of increase in mobilization. It is denoted by (Te). Normal cost + The direct cost required to complete the activity in the normal duration is called normal cost and is denoted by (Cn). Crash cost + The direct cost corresponding to the crash time of completing an activity is known as crash cost and is denoted by (Ce). Cost slope Crash cost - normal cost + The direct cost curv? gasp is#eulee as shown below. But this curve can be approximated by the straight line or more than one straight lines depending upon the flatness of the curve. Thus the slope of this straight line is cost slope. * Cost slope (CS) = Minimum duration + The duration obtained after crashing all activities is known as minimum duration.Time cost trade-off Time and cost are the two most important resources that a project manager deals with. Both of these resources have constrains and the job of a project manager is to have judicious balance between them. The judicious. balance between time and cost is called Time-Cost trade-off and it can be achieved by studying the availability and demand of these resources for the given project. From the total cost ACB, it can be seen that the total cost of a project is minimum for certain time duration. This duration is known as optimum duration for the corresponding minimum cost. Further if the project duration is increased, the total cost will also increase. On the other hand if the project duration is decreased to the crash value, the project cost will be the highest. The optimum duration is less than the normal duration corresponding to the direct costs. This is due to the fact that both direct and indirect cost increases beyond the normal duration, whereas below the normal duration indirect cost decrease, but the direct cost increases. Total cost A Indirect | ‘Minimum cost TB Direct | co Crash, chiration > Optimum Normal duration — durationSteps in optimization of cost (Cost optimization through Network) First of all the critical path along with critical activities and non-critical activities which are likely to become critical during the course of crashing are identified from calculation. Calculating the cost slopes of all activities and ranking of activities in ascending order of cost slopes is done. Calculation of direct cost by adding normal cost of all activities. Calculation of indirect cost by multiplying the longest duration times the overhead expense. Crashing the project activity as per ranking, crashing is done starting from the activity of critical path having least cost slope to the maximum possible extent. Calculate the direct cost by adding the extra cost of crashing to the normal cost and corresponding indirect cost of reduced project duration. During the process of crashing of critical activities, there is possible of emerging new critical path. Therefore the crashing of project is done simultaneously by re-crashing the parallel activities. The activities for crashing are considered serially in the ascending order to their cost slope so far . The activity lying in common path is selected for optimal solution. While crashing activities on the critical path or paths which became critical, the activity on this possible. critical path are also crashed in the same way. If there are more than one critical path then one activity form each path is selected at one time for crashing (simultaneous crashing) and so on. This process is continued till the project shortening is possible.Numerical 1. The following table shows the costs and duration of each activity of a project. The network is shown. The indirect cost may be taken as Rs. 3150.- per week. Determine the optimum duration of the project and corresponding minimum cost. ‘Activity ‘Normal duration | Normal cost Crash duration — | Crash cost A 7 $000 4 15500 B 9 5000 6 9500 a 5 7000 7 10000 D 6 9000 4 16000 E 6 6000 4 12000 2. If the indirect cost per week is Rs. 3000, find the optimal crashed project completion time and corresponding minimum cost. ‘Activ ‘Tmmediate “Time (weeks) ‘Cost (Rs) predecessor [Normal ‘Crash ‘Normal Crash A = 5 2000 2300 B - 10 8 4000 4300 c A 6 : 3000 3125 D A 9 6 5000 5225 E B 10 9 2500 2700 F B 13 13 5000 - G DE 5 3 1000 1700oral Cot Cost Slope