Specialist contractors – generally known as subcontractors – perform the majority of the work on commercial construction projects. They face significant challenges in allocating their resources across multiple, concurrent projects (O’Brien and Fischer 2000). Despite their central nature to project performance, relatively little research has been performed to formally model their operations. Without such modeling, there exists little basis from which to measure or improve performance. This dissertation attempts to address the limited literature by providing a formal, information model for subcontractor resource management. There are three main contributions: First, addition to the general literature on subcontractor management as a …show more content…
For example, frequent delays result in schedule changes, so subcontractors face challenges to manage their resources. However, existing commercial applications cannot fully represent subcontractors’ (subs’) resource allocation needs well. As noted by Ibbs and Nguyen (2007), the need for representing and capturing the practice of resource allocation is “apparent and imperative.” Unfortunately, existing literature is missing a way which can detailed describe the processes of resource allocation. There is a pressing need to provide such a representation as a basis to improve subcontractor resource management performance.
1.2 Case Study: Ellis Air Subcontractor
A case study conducted as part of this research is briefly previewed . Ellis Air is an air/mechanical subcontractor located in Melbourne, Australia. Ellis Air currently has twenty three employees and works on seven to eight projects concurrently. The number of employees varies from eighteen to twenty eight because they may hire temporary employees.
Ellis Air manually manages schedules and resources. To perform resource allocation, the project manager and resource manager will sit down with a piece of paper. They will list all projects and activities, and then start allocating resources based on their experiences. In case of a
A basic definition for the procurement is “the way the building is realised” and “involves assembling and organising the skills and services of a team of construction professionals”. (the Construction Round Table, 1995). More precisely, the construction industry describes procurement as “a system that establishes the roles and relationships which make up a project organisation”; hence the overall organisation and communication structure for the management, administration and control of a project is established by the procurement system. (D.C.H Coles, 2010)
Resource management is the efficient and effective distribution/allocation of an ASDA resources when and where they are needed. These resources may include financial resources, inventory, human resources,
Cost and Value management is becoming a large part of companies competing in today’s market. According to the text, “projects and their effective management can provide organizations with a significant competitive edge through cost reduction, enhanced responsiveness, and overall value to customers.” (Venkataraman & Pinto, 2008, p. 1). In this paper we are going to focus on some of the techniques and how they can either help or hinder a project. Through information and examples we will explore the importance of work packages and the work breakdown structure (WBS), establishing a cost and schedule performance
The information that they provide is scrutinized and their credit is checked to qualify their bid. After the proposals are accepted and the subcontractor is awarded a job, a formal contract needs to be put in place. This contract covers all the project specific information in detail specifying what is expected from the subcontractor, the legal disclosures and liability clauses. A project furnishes mainly three pieces of a contract: the scope of work, project schedule and schedule of values. The scope of work covers the work that is expected to be performed, project schedule specifies the time in which the awarded project needs to be completed and the schedule of values points out the detailed breakdown of the cost the contractor is going to fulfill for the project which is generally derived from the purchase order. Change order is the change which takes place in the scope of work after the contract is put in place, these need to be documented and the increase or decrease in the cost affected by this change need to be compensated by either of the parties. The task of performance evaluation is yet to be performed by me which would be covered in the next phase of the internship when I observe a bid from awarding to
Using resources effectively is very important for the business as well as helping maintaining staff safety, stock management, minimising
Resource Management: Evaluate current resources and resource plans, and ensure that each functional group has the resources it needs (people, technology, equipment, infrastructure) to scale for growth.
SUMMARY Several influential industry reports have pointed out that a decline in construction quality and productivity could be attributed to the performance of subcontractors who are entrusted to complete the actual works, yet subcontractor performance appraisal is a much neglected subject in construction. To facilitate subcontractor registration, management and/or selection, an equitable and reliable subcontractor performance appraisal would be indispensable. Being regarded as a reliable and practical means for performance evaluation, the balanced scorecard
Resource allocation is a process that involves the company strategically deciding where resources shoyld be used in the production of goods or services. Allocations will be used to make workflow processes more effective and efficient. This will also require allocations for training. Management must be able to use allocations for resources wisely in order to save money, while
Subcontractors are often paid on a per job basis, which can result in poor workmanship as the job is completed as fast as possible.
In construction projects, mostly the firms (in this case the firms become client) do not have the skills or develop skills inside the firms to undertake the projects due to amount of the projects should be conducted or the complexity of the projects (Reve and Levitt, 1984). Therefore, the economic decision to conduct the projects is to procure them to third parties. However, more commonly the client agonize the final quality of the projects will meet standard requirements. Thus, impacts to involvement of complex contracts of construction procurement.
Choosing construction management as a procurement strategy means the client is responsible for leading the
There are constraints on capacity management and these are normally Time and Capacity. Time may be a constraint where a customer has a particular required delivery date. In this situation, capacity managers often "plan backwards". In other words, they allocate the final stage (operation) of the production tasks to the period where delivery is required; the penultimate task one period earlier and so on. This process helps identify whether there is sufficient time to meet the production demands and whether capacity needs to be increased, albeit temporarily.
It is clear to see that throughout the project the tasks and progress were monitored very closely. The project is heavily dependent on the resources provided by its shareholders and in turn they rely on regular updates to reassure them on their investment. In the construction and building industry the methods and application of project management tools are very reliable and well tested. Therefore, it could benefit the project if the it was managed with detailed and defined practises and also follow standards set and agreed upon on a international level.
How contracts are handle it in a company could determine the success or failure of the relationship between the seller and the buyer. Despite the importance of this process, most of the companies do not spend enough time reviewing important aspects of a contract such as expectations, responsibilities, and penalties. The lack of communication and cross organizational teams also jeopardizes contractual relationships. For instance, if the contract team in a shipyard is not aligned with production schedules and capabilities, it might cause that the contract team bid for more work than production team can handle. Additionally, it is common to
This type of procurement strategy is a ‘fast track’ strategy. Client pays a sum of money to hire a management contractor to manage the whole construction project. Therefore, some early work can be carried out before the design is complete. The contract for the construction projects are between the management contractor and sub contractor. The final cost for the project can not be identified until the final work has been awarded.