Haramaya University

Haramaya Institute of Technology

Department of Civil Engineering

Ayele.B (M.Sc. in Construction Technology and Management)

(B.Sc. in Civil Engineering)
Email: [email protected]
Construction Management ( CEng 5204 )
Section-2- Lecture 1-Planning
Section Objectives
 At the end of these sessions you should be able to:-

 Be familiar with aspects of construction project management such as project

planning; progress; monitoring; construction risk management, quality control and
cost control

 Understand the different types of construction project scheduling techniques

 Understand construction project cash flow

 Understand insurance, safety and health in relation to construction site

Section Outlines
 Construction planning
 Construction scheduling
 Project finance
 Risk management
 Project control
 Insurance in the construction industry
 Safety in the construction site
Why Planning?

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”

by Benjamin Franklin

“Without goals, and plans to reach them, you are

like a ship that has set sail with no destination!”
by Fitzhugh Dodson
 Construction Planning
• Planning is a general term that sets a clear road map that should
be followed to reach a destination.

 Involves

• The breakdown of the project into definable, measurable, and

identifiable work tasks/activities,

• and then establishes the logical interdependence among them.

Construction Planning

 The plan serves as a cookbook by answering these questions for all

personnel identified with the project:
 What will be accomplished?

 How will it be accomplished?

 Where will it be accomplished?

 How much does it cost?

 Why will it be accomplished?

Construction Planning
• In construction, for example, plans may exist at several levels: corporate strategic plans,
pre-tender plans, pre-contract plans, short-term construction plans, and long-term
construction plans. These plans are different from each other; however, all these plans

 Involve four main steps:

 Performing breakdown of work items involved in the project into activities.

 Identifying the proper sequence by which the activities should be executed.

 Make decisions about which methods, and technologies to be used for project success.

 Estimating the resources, time, and cost of individual activities.

Construction Planning
Construction Planning
 Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

 The WBS is described as a hierarchical structure that is designed to logically

subdivide all the work elements of the project into a graphical presentation.

 At the lowest level of the WBS, the elements of work are called a work package. A
list of project activities is developed from the work packages.

 A work package contains the work defined at the lowest level of WBS for which
cost and duration can be estimated and managed.
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
 WBS is a tool for managing complex projects.
• A first step in creating a schedule
• Useful for defining the scope of work
Consists of:
 Subdividing the task into smaller & smaller portions
• Each task is divided into a simple enough task to estimate the duration
• can assign crews
• each task has a natural sequence relative to other tasks
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
• A work breakdown structure does not show the sequence in which work is
performed.

• Such sequencing is determined when a schedule is developed.

• The building block of a WBS is the activity.

• Activity is a unique unit of the project that has a specified duration. In other
words, an activity can be any function or decision in a project that consumes time.
Activity
 Activities are classified into three types:
1. Production activities: activities that involve the use of resources such as labor,
equipment, material, or subcontractor.
Examples are excavation, formwork, reinforcement, concreting, etc.
2. Procurement activities: activities that specify the time for procuring materials or
equipment that are needed for production activity. Examples are brick procurement, boiler
manufacturing, delivery, etc.
3. Management activities: activities that are related to management decisions such as
approvals, vacations, etc.
Activity
• An activity can be as small as “steel fixing of first floor columns” or as large as
“construct first floor columns”. This level of details depends on the purpose of
preparing the project plan.

• Accordingly, level of details depends on: planning stage, size of the project,
complexity of the work, management expertise.
Activity
Example: Contractor has the bidding documents, including the drawings and
specifications, for a certain project. Within a certain area in the project's WBS, a
concrete foundation work package is included and the planning exercise for it is
considered here. The first list of activities that might be put together for this work
package is shown in table below.
Activity
Activity Description

A Site clearing

B Removal of Trees

C General Excavation

D Grading general area

E Excavation for utility trenches

F Placing formwork and reinforcement for concrete

G Installing sewer lines

Activities Relationships
 In order to identify the relationships among activities, the planning team needs to
answer the following questions for each activity in the project:

 Which activity(ies) must be finished before the current one can start?

 What activity(ies) may be constructed concurrently with the current one?

 What activity(ies) must follow the current one?

Activity Relationships
Example: Suppose that a site preparation and concrete slab foundation construction
project consists of nine different activities:
Activities Relationships
Activities Relationships
• Activities A (site clearing) and B (tree removal) do not have preceding activities
since they depend on none of the other activities.

• We assume that activities C (general excavation) and D (general grading) are

preceded by activity A (site clearing).

• Activities E (trench excavation) and F (concrete preparation) cannot begin until the
completion of general excavation and grading, since they involve subsequent
excavation and trench preparation.
 Activities Relationships
• Activities G (install lines) and H (install utilities) represent installation in the utility trenches
and cannot be attempted until the trenches are prepared so activity E (trench excavation) is
a preceding activity.

• We also assume that the utilities should not be installed until grading is completed to avoid
equipment conflicts, so activity D (general grading) is also preceding activities G (install
sewers) and H (install utilities)

• Finally, an activity I (pour concrete) cannot begin until the sewer line is installed and
formwork and reinforcement are ready, so activities F and G are preceding. Other
utilities(activity H) may be routed over the slab foundation.
 Activities Relationships
• Four types of relationships among activities can be defined as and illustrated below.
Typically, relationships are defined from the predecessor to the successor activity.
a) Finish to start (FS). The successor activity can begin only when the current activity
completes.
b) Finish to finish (FF). The finish of the successor activity depends on the finish of the
current activity.
c) Start to start (SS). The start of the successor activity depends on the start of the current
activity.
d) Start to finish (SF). The successor activity cannot finish until the current activity starts.
Activities Relationships
Activities Relationships
 Activities Relationships
• A network is a graphical representation of the project activities and their
relationships. A project network is a set of arrows and nodes. Before drawing the
network, it is necessary to ensure that the project has a unified starting and ending
point.

• There are two ways that are commonly used to draw a network diagram for a
project:

1. Activity on Arrow (AOA) representation.

2. Activity on Node (AON) representation

 Activities Relationships
 Activity on arrow network (AOA)

• In this method, the arrows represent activities while the nodes represent the start
and the end of an activity (usually named as events).

• The length of the arrow connecting the nodes has no significance and may be
straight, curved, or bent.

• When one activity depends upon another, both appear on the diagram as two
arrows having a common node.
Activities Relationships
 Activities Relationships
 The following are some rules that need to be followed when constructing an AOA
network diagram:

• Each activity must have a unique i – j numbers, where i (the number at the tail of
the arrow is smaller than j (the number at the head of the arrow).

• Avoid back arrows and crossing of arrows, where possible.

In some situations, when more than one arrow leave the same node and arrive at
another node, dummy activities must be used.
 Activities Relationships
• The dummy activity is an activity with zero duration, consumes no resources, drawn

as dashed lines, and used to adjust the network diagram.

• A dummy activity is also used when one activity depends upon two preceding

activities and another activity depends only upon one of these two preceding

activities as shown in figure.

Activities Relationships
Use of dummy activity
 Activities Relationships
 Activity on node network (AON)

• This method is also called the precedence diagram method (PDM). In this method,
the nodes represent activities and the arrows represent logical relationships among
the activities.

• If the arrow starts from the end side of an activity (activity A) and ends at the start
side of another activity (activity B), then A is a predecessor of B.

• AON representation allows the overlap or lag representation on the relationship

arrows connecting activities.
 Activities Relationships
 Activity on node network (AON)

 Overlap between activities (negative lag) is defined as how much a particular

activity must be completed before a succeeding activity may start. The absence of
overlap means that the first activity must finish before the second may start. A
negative overlap (lag) means a delay is required between the two activities.

Overlap among activities

Activities Relationships

Basic patterns of AON diagrams

 Activities Relationships
 Comparison between AOA and AON
 While both networks can be used to represent a project network, there are some
differences between them:
• There is no need for the use of dummy activities in AON representation.
• AON are more easily to draw and to read.
• In AOA, an activity can only start when all its predecessors have finished.
• AON allows for overlap/lag representation.
• AON allows for the representation of the four types of relationships while AOA allows
only for the finish to start relationship.
 Activities Relationships
Example : Construct an AOA and AON networks for the activities listed in table below.
Activities Relationships

AOA Network
 Activities Relationships
• To understand the drawing of the AON, some ordering for the activities may be
necessary. This is done by placing the activities in a sequence step order. A
sequence step may be defined as the earliest logical position in the network that an
activity can occupy while maintaining the logical relationships.

• In this example, as there are two activities (activities A and B) has no predecessor,
then a start activity is added to have one unified start activity (Start) for the project.
Also, a finish activity (Finish) is added as there are two activities without successors
(activities F and G).
Activities Relationships
Determining the sequence steps
 Activities Relationships
 Note that dummy activities are not required for expressing precedence
relationships in activity-on-node networks.

An AON Network
 Activities Relationships
• Exercise 1: Draw the AOA and AON networks for the project given below.
Activities Relationships
• Solution for Exercise 1

a). AOA network b). AON network

 Determination of duration of activities
• Having defined the work activities, each activity has an associated time duration. These
durations are used in preparing a schedule.

• We can estimate the duration from previous similar projects or unit productivity rates

• For example, the duration of an activity Dij such as concrete formwork assembly might be
estimated as:

• Dij = Aij / (Pij * Nij), Where Aij is the required formwork area to assemble (in m2), Pij is the
average productivity of a standard crew in this task (measured in 𝑚2 per hour), and Nij is
the number of crews assigned to the task.
Determination of duration of activities
• Example 1: Activity duration to place 230 𝑚2 of slab formwork, assuming a
production rate of 1.5 𝑚2 /hr. /crew (assuming 8 working hours per day) can be
established as follows

Duration = quantity/productivity = 230 𝑚2 / 12 𝑚2 /day = 19.16 days.

Determination of duration of activities
Example 2. The construction of a reinforced concrete wall involves placing 660 𝑚3
concrete, fixing 50 ton of steel, and 790 𝑚2 of formwork. The following information
belongs to the jobs involved in this activity:

• A 6 man concrete crew(1-crew) can place 16 𝑚3 of concrete/day.

• A steel-fixer and assistant can fix 0.5 ton of reinforcement/day.

• A carpenter and assistant can fix and remove 16 𝑚2 of shuttering/day.

Determination of duration of activities
 Calculate the duration of the activity considering the steel-fixer as the critical
resource.

Solution

• using one steel-fixer: duration = 50 / 0.5 = 100 days

• using one carpenter: duration = 790 / 16 = 49.4 days

• using one concreting crew: duration = 660 / 16 = 41.25 days.

• Then, for a balanced mix of resources, use 2 steel-fixer crews, one carpenter crew,
and one concreting crew. Accordingly, the activity duration = 50 / 0.5 x 2 = 50 days.
 Determination of duration of activities
Exercise 2 If the daily production rate for a crew that works in an activity is 175
units/day and the total crew cost per day is $1800. The material needed for daily
work is 4.5 units at $100/unit.

a. Calculate the time and cost it takes the crew to finish 1400 units

b. Calculate the total unit cost. Consider an eight hour work day.

Solution a. Duration (units of time) = Quantity / Production per unit of time x number
of crews = 1400 / 175 x 1 = 8 days
Determination of duration of activities
Cost (labor cost) = Duration (units of time) x crew cost per unit of time = 8 days x
$1800 / day = $14400

Total direct cost = $14400 + 4.5 units of material x $100 / day x 8 day = $18000

b. Unit cost = total cost / quantity = $18000 / 1400 = $12.86 / unit

Sometimes the productivity of a specific crew expressed in man-hours/unit not

units/day. For example, if the productivity is said to be Man-hour/cubic meters,
this means how long it will take one labor to construct one unit. 1 man hour =
work completed in an hour of uninterrupted effort by an average worker.
End of Lecture1