Section Q
Installation and Construction
When we build let us think we build for ever.
John Ruskin. Taken from a memorial in Belgrave Square to Sir Robert Grosvenor, First Marquess of Westminster
The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 8 are meant to help the contractor:
- Improve the health and safety in the industry
- Have the right people for the right job at the right time to manage the risks on site
- Focus on effective planning and manage the risk – not the paperwork.
Everyone controlling site work has health and safety responsibilities. Checking that working conditions are healthy and safe before work begins and ensuring that the proposed work is not going to put others at risk requires planning and organization. This applies whatever the size of the site. Indicate whether you are the principal contractor. What role is the client fulfilling?
The project manager must have an understanding of the build process sequence. Within each agreed geographical area, it starts with the civil discipline of excavation for foundations, followed by the mechanical disciplines erecting steelwork and vessels and equipment. A judgement has to be made as to when there is sufficient progress to enable the critical disciplines of piping and cabling (electrical and instruments) to start. The discipline approach has then to be transferred into an area focus and finally transposed back into a systems approach to suit the requirements needed to set the facility to work. However, if resources are available, for work that does not interfere with anything else, it might as well be done – as a construction manager told me, when I asked why lamp posts were sprouting up across the site before the roads had been started.
A building process starts in the same manner: excavation and foundations, then walls and roof followed by windows, which invariably seem to be critical. When the building is water tight and secure, piping and the ‘first fix’ of the electrics can take place. Kitchens and bathrooms come next, followed by the finishing trades (plastering and painting), and then the ‘second fix’ of electrics. Finally: floor coverings, skirting boards, finishing with permanent boundary walls or fences and landscaping are done. Nevertheless, don't forget logic and common sense. The theoretical sequence will have to be modified to place underfloor heating piping in the floor screed.
The construction manager is responsible for this phase. Nevertheless, the project manager should take the initiative to move from the final construction area focus to the systems focus and the development of start packs needed for commissioning.
1 The Key Staff
1.1
Get the right people; see Section D Mobilization, paragraphs 1.1 to 1.5. Review and approve the installation or construction field organization and key staff. The choice of the installation or construction manager is the single most important choice of personnel on the project (apart from the project manager!). However, the project manager is unlikely to be able to exert much influence on the selection of the construction manager or the construction team.
1.2
For a contractor, the choice of site manager will have been determined during the tendering and proposal stage. If you are leading the proposal effort, you will have an opportunity to select the right person on the basis that they are needed as part of a team to win the contract. Make use of this opportunity. You must be able to get on with the construction manager.
1.3
If you want a successful project, you must involve the user in the earlier processes. In this case, the site manager needs to be involved in the design process. Your chances of achieving this are very slim. Site managers are out in the field until they really must be released for the next assignment. Thus, the construction phase will be started by their deputy or someone else.
1.3.1
The consequence is that a construction coordinator will be appointed to provide the construction input during the design phase. The construction coordinator must be of sufficient stature in the company to command the respect of the ultimate site management team. The decisions they make in the development of the construction plan need to be accepted and not challenged when the job becomes active in the field. Make sure that they are someone that your site manager has agreed to and has faith in. Do not let this person be reassigned to another project until the site manager takes over. Construction should live with their own mistakes.
1.4
The choice of subcontract manager is the most important after the choice of construction manager and needs to be chosen early.
1.5
Hold back on staffing‐up until sufficient drawings, equipment, and materials are available.
1.6
Decide whether an industrial relations manager is required.
1.7
Ensure that the quality assurance department covers all installation or construction activities.
1.8
For overseas projects, maximise local hires for all nontechnical/administrative functions. Use expatriates only for management/supervisory/head of department roles.
2 Construction Planning
2.1
Is construction to be by direct hire of labour or by subcontracts? With direct hire, you achieve productivity by your own efforts.
2.2
Is construction to be cost or schedule driven?
2.3
Review and approve installation and construction budgets and reporting systems. These should be a continuation of the home office system.
2.4
If it is decided to have a construction camp at a remote location, the design, procurement, and installation of the camp may turn out to be a critical path in terms of starting work at the site. Since this will affect the overall project, it will need to be considered immediately after contract award.
2.5
Carry out a detailed review of the owner's design package to evaluate the impact on installation or construction (see Section O Design, paragraphs 2.2 and 2.2.1). Advise design of any factors that could affect their work.
2.6
Advise the design department of the proposed construction methods. Decide on the degree of preassembly and modularization, so that the design department can develop the project accordingly.
2.7
Prepare and approve a subcontract plan so that design can produce drawings accordingly. The drawings must clearly indicate the limits of a particular subcontractor's work.
2.8
Review potential industrial relations problems and plan an appropriate strategy with the corporate specialist. Review key requirements of any national industrial relations agreement or other special arrangements.
2.8.1
Develop and approve the industrial relations plan. A word of caution: it may be dangerous to assume that an expert in your home country can handle industrial relations problems in another country.
2.9
Review and approve the installation or construction plan, manpower forecasts, and so on.
2.10
Review and approve the field contract or subcontract control system including:
- Administration
- Reporting
- Change orders
- Back charges (very important)
- Claims
- And so on.
2.11
Check that the following have been considered in developing management plans:
- Location: access, transport, security, permits, local taxes
- Cultural issues: state holidays, impact of religion
- Language: bilingual staff, availability of translators
- Time zones: communication with home office
- IT systems: availability locally, compatibility with home office
- Protecting information: safes, master documents, number of copies
- Public relations: local contacts, photographs, press releases.
2.12
Review and approve the installation or construction plan for temporary facilities (this can be as much as 33 per cent of the total cost for remote sites).
2.13
Set up any necessary craft training programmes.
2.14
Set up all necessary site procedures for:
- Safety
- Material handling
- Material issuing
- Material receiving
- Insurance claims
- And so on
2.15
Develop a transport policy. Do you rent or buy? What are the restrictions on importing vehicles? Do you provide minibuses for supervisors, buses for labour, and cars (depending upon their assignment conditions) for the construction manager and project manager? Nevertheless, cut down on site vehicles.
2.15.1
Control the import of vehicles. Because the paperwork was deficient, we had cars stuck in customs. After a time, customs auctioned them off to pay the storage costs they were charging! Buy locally if you can.
2.16
Develop a safety plan and a system for maintaining safety records. Evaluate different safety incentive schemes.
2.17
Develop a medical plan for remote locations.
2.18
Develop a project security plan as needed.
2.19
Develop an emergency evacuation plan.
2.20
Establish and implement manual and nonmanual personnel policies for the site and other remote locations.
2.20.1
Consult with the construction manager about looking after families, the availability of schools, and any involvement with the local community.
2.21
For remote locations, make contact with your home country embassy or consulate.
2.22
On overseas projects, ensure a system is developed for processing work permits, resident permits, security passes, and so on.
2.23
Develop mobilization and demobilization plans for manual and nonmanual personnel.
3 Work Packaging
3.1
Use a work package approach to planning and managing the work (see Section F, Scope, subsection 3.0). This enables the team to review the work, obtain the necessary resources prior to starting, and perform the work to schedule.
- The workload can be evaluated before labour is allocated.
- Field or site controls can be developed to suit the defined work package. The responsible supervisor or site engineer can then be monitored on the control of that individual package.
- The status of each work package (ahead or behind schedule) can be determined more easily than evaluating the whole project.
- Additional resources can be allocated if work begins to slip behind schedule.
- It can be used to generate competition between similar disciplines and thus provide a positive impact on productivity.
- Work packages provide well‐defined subcontract packages, enable better control, and reduce potential claims.
- Work packages may be modified to reflect the status of information and, if necessary, subdivided so as to maintain the flow of information to the site.
4 Construction Site Work
4.1
Do not let work start on site (building, making, and, in generic terms, any doing) before you are sure that you are ready. Also that the design team can keep feeding the hungry animal that you propose to release. Once site work starts, the construction people will start asking for information and often in an out‐of‐sequence order, which will add pressure to the home office work.
4.1.1
Starting work on site should be a joint agreement by the project management team. Get the project procurement manager to make a full appraisal of the material status. A firm commitment regarding delivery dates, for all outstanding materials, is needed before the decision can be made to start above‐ground site erection work. This is in effect a formal ‘gate review.’
4.1.2
See Part I, Section B Project Management Characteristics, paragraph 3.4.
4.1.3
As soon as the site organization is sufficient for the task, transfer all contracting activities to site.
4.2
In order to establish a really effective relationship with site management, you, as project manager, must be resident in the field full‐time. You should be working site hours, at least from the start of mechanical erection. If you don't move to the site, you will not be in full control of the project.
4.2.1
The role of the project manager during construction is to ensure that construction has all the drawings and materials that they need. A key function is to manage all the interfaces and to keep the client ‘off the back’ of the construction manager.
4.2.2
Monitor the interaction between the site engineers and the client's engineers. This daily contact is what generates changes. Remind them that only the project managers are authorised to make changes. Consequently, make sure that the client representative(s) has the authority to give an instruction that would generate a claim.
4.2.3
The civil engineering industry is very good at using triplicate pads for site instructions: one copy to be kept by the individual receiving the instruction, one for the client giving the instruction, and one for management.
4.3
Make sure that progress photographs are taken on a regular, monthly basis from the same vantage points each time. Take additional photographs of any problems, delay factors, or additional work requested by the client. Identify the problem area on the photograph and make notes on the back as to why it was taken.
4.4
Extensive route surveys will need to be carried out for the delivery of large equipment items and any pre‐assembled units. Have this done in collaboration with a specialist heavy lift/transport contractor. It will determine:
- The limits to pre‐assembled unit sizes and weights
- The optimum route through public roads to the site
- The optimum ship loading facilities
- The final setting down point
- Where roads or bridges and culverts will need reinforcement
4.4.1
Despite the route being a project effort, be aware that the police have the ultimate decision‐making authority on public roads, often to the detriment of the project schedule.
4.5
Piping is usually the critical path for a process plant. Manage the balance between loading the heaviest and easiest items first, the pipe rack and piping, and manage the temptation to put off the more complex in‐plant piping.
4.5.1
Get the straight‐run piping materials ordered and delivered early. This enables an early build‐up of the workforce and gets all the quality controls and administration in place before the difficult elements start. This obviously needs the racks in place, and it also helps to keep the lay‐down areas tidy.
4.5.2
Windows are usually critical for building work. Owner clients don't have the confidence that the openings will be constructed to the accuracy detailed on the drawings and, consequently, the windows don't get ordered in time. Further, the average conventional builder doesn't necessarily have the skills required to meet the tolerances demanded by high‐tech windows.
4.6
Check that all underground work (foundations, trenches, piping, and paving) will be complete before the first pre‐assembled unit arrives on site.
4.7
Monitor site's use of scheduled overtime. It's expensive, and studies have shown that productivity drops off quite dramatically after five to eight weeks with regular scheduled overtime of fifty to sixty‐hour weeks.9
4.8
Site cabins will be needed for foremen to view drawings and administer paperwork and so on. However, in tropical climates, do not install air conditioning. The foremen and supervisors are meant to be onsite doing a job, not hiding in a cool location!
4.9
Build relationships with the local community by hiring local resources. Sometimes the job can be done just as well and at a fraction of the cost, see w and x under 5 below.
4.10
Initiate start packs early.
4.11
Make sure that construction has a clear understanding of what constitutes project completion.
5 Some Specific Construction Ideas
- Put hoardings/screens up around the site where it interfaces with the public. It improves safety and productivity. This is particularly pertinent for urban building sites.
- Pre‐fabricate, pre‐assemble, pre‐insulate, pre‐dress mechanical equipment, and pre‐test equipment.
- Reduce the number of vendor representatives. Control their time and duration on site.
- Set a maximum time for performing trade qualification tests in addition to quality checking.
- Specify PVC sheeting instead of concrete blinding.
- In multi‐foundation areas, excavate the plot area to the elevation of 95 per cent of the foundations. Construct the foundations and then backfill.
- Allow pockets for bolt holes.
-
Shuttering: Follow local practice and use timber off‐cuts. Size foundations in standard increments. - Use a single scaffolding contractor that all subcontractors rent from. NB: scaffolding is prone to being underestimated.
- Get the concrete reinforcing‐bar subcontractor to do their own rebar schedules.
- Award fabrication contracts (for example steelwork and pipework) to the erection contractor in order to get rid of continuous arguments about errors in fabrication.
- Make all painting (including touch‐up repairs) the responsibility of the mechanical contractors.
- Fabricate piping spoolsoff site.
- Use two structural steel contractors on a design and construct basis: one for the main work and another for the miscellaneous items.
- Construct tall structures early so as not to sterilise/isolate the surrounding area for safety reasons.
- Schedule erection of major equipment/vessels to allow them to be placed directly onto their foundations. This minimises costly mobilization and demobilization of special/heavy lift cranes.
- Maximise dressing of structural steelwork to the maximum extent. Fireproof off site. Erect with secondary steel/platforms in place.
- Insulate major vessels at the vendors' works.
- Pull cable in trenches at night and cover the trenches with sleepers during the day. Don't forget to allow for a ledge in the construction of the trench in order to allow for the timber covers.
- When open cable trenches are necessary, install cable ducts to allow construction equipment to have access.
- Maximise pre‐shutdown work. Allow time for pre‐planning; for every week of shutdown, allow one month of preplanning.
- Where appropriate, maximise the use of local practices, particularly for building work.
- Use two to three hundred labourers to dig a large excavation rather than buying or hiring a mechanical excavator (in China, for example).
- On my project in Sri Lanka, we used the local elephant to string large‐bore pipe (not dissimilar to tree trunks.) The pipeline was not schedule critical to the main project, and the terrain was awkward.
- Where it is local practice, use bamboo scaffolding rather than importing steel scaffolding.
6 Establishing Authority
6.1
A word of warning: construction personnel tend to think of their function as a separate organization, and as a result, they will bypass the project manager and report to their functional manager instead.
6.2
Take control early. If necessary, find the right issue and give the construction manager a written instruction. If they ignore you, write the facts to your boss and wait to see how much management backing you get.