Construction planning and scheduling are crucial in integrating all of your construction operations and stages required to execute a specific construction project on schedule and within budget. Despite having separate functions, planning and scheduling are essential for successful project management.
Construction planning is selecting appropriate policies, methods, and processes to fulfill your project objectives. Construction scheduling converts your project action plans for scope, time, cost, and quality into a calendar.
It is vital for your project team to adapt the project specifications, including requirements for resources (labor, equipment, building materials, etc.), communications, risks, and procurement, into an operational workflow system.
Your schedule becomes your core tool for managing your projects in conjunction with your project plan and budget, and having an integrated or coordinated cost-time schedule serves as your foundation for monitoring and surveillance activities throughout the life cycle of your project.
Why construction planning and scheduling are important?
Proper construction planning and scheduling are critical to completing any construction project on schedule and within budget. A well-planned construction schedule specifies the pace of your work and dictates how it is completed.
Preparing your construction timetable properly and in advance increases your performance and effectiveness. It also aids in the definition of your procedures, methodologies, and schedules for when materials are to be placed. Furthermore, because your building timetable helps you to increase your quality control procedures, sequencing work is simple.
When planning and organizing your construction project, keep an eye out for any hazards. Top-down planning, cost risk analysis, and keeping track of things are all possible using construction planning and management software. It is one of the most effective methods for assessing and mitigating risk while assuring the smooth operation of your project.
Project Planning and Scheduling
It guarantees that the appropriate quality and amount of materials are used in each step.
Materials and resource procurement is on track because you can use your timetable to get the right materials when you need them.
Furthermore, safety performance improves when you utilize your plan to track which workers are on-site and ensure that safety requirements are followed appropriately.
Having a reliable construction schedule also allows you to better manage your time among all of your project stakeholders, allowing them to better organize their tasks. By gaining complete control of your project, you may easily eliminate cost overruns and delays, reducing unwanted surprises.
A building timetable that is both particular and well-planned assures efficiency and productivity. Construction scheduling enables you and the project team to regulate quality standards and optimize resource allocation throughout the construction process.
Time is money, and a consistent schedule allows each party to dedicate time to all operations in order to avoid delays and cost overruns.
What is construction planning?
Construction planning is critical in managing and executing your construction projects because it entails selecting the technology, defining the work tasks, evaluating the required resources and scope of individual activities, and the identification of potential interactions and workflows among various activities. An effective construction plan is critical in determining your construction budget and timeline for the entire project. Developing and creating the construction plan is a difficult and crucial process in construction management.
You must create the technical components while also making organizational judgments concerning the connections between project stakeholders and even the subcontractors you must include.
Construction Project Planning can be Divided into Three Types
1. Make a Strategic Plan
It entails a high-level selection of project goals. Corporate planners from the project owner are usually in charge of strategic planning.
2. Organizational Planning
It entails meticulous planning by the construction teams in order to satisfy the project’s strategic objectives. Before the project teams can describe the building schedule, they must first answer a number of questions so that the construction master plan may be prepared.
3. Scheduling
It entails a thorough operational plan with a timetable based on the strategic objectives.
Five Phases of Construction
Construction project planning and workforce scheduling put you up for success throughout all of the key stages of your build.
Phases of construction
- Concept and Initiation
- Planning
- Execution
- Performance and Monitoring
- Project Close
How to Plan a Construction Project?
Yes, there is a lot to do. These procedures will assist you in assembling all of the parts for a solid building project plan.
1. Develop a Business Case
You must plan the size of your crew, as well as subcontractors, resources, and the overall budget to cover labor, materials, fees, equipment leases, and permits.
This will result in a single document (Project Initiation Document) that explains everything you’ll need to complete the project.
2. Outline Your Objectives
Use the resources you obtained in step one to develop a high-level approach for mapping out the project.
Once you’ve determined what you want to accomplish, you may identify the major project areas that will assist you to get there.
3. Gather the Full Team’s Support and Estimate Resources
As you begin to allocate responsibilities, gather your team to examine the plan or tag them in your project management software.
This allows everyone to see what you expect of them, ask questions, and detect potential issues. When each crew member understands their position and how they contribute to the team’s overall performance, they will be more engaged and productive.
4. Calculate How Long Each Task Will Take
Add length to each individual task using information from your own company or estimates from subcontractors. Give them a start and end date based on the prioritization you performed in step two.
Make sure your schedule is reasonable and that you can keep all of the dates you’ve specified. You don’t want to feel obligated to cut corners in the future only to meet a deadline.
5. Assign and Notify All Task Owners
Inform each individual of their responsibilities and the deadline for completion. With a big list of contractors and other vendors, keeping your schedule up to date and structured is critical.
A digital solution that allows you to arrange teams by specialization, tag crew members, issue automatic due date alerts, color-code work by milestone, and more is an excellent approach to simplify straightforward communication.
6. Review the Schedule
Schedule regular evaluations to go over the schedule, how well it is currently operating, and any bumps along the road. Update it as each project advances so that you may anticipate what you’ll need later.
7. Discuss Essential Project Components With Stakeholders
It is critical to keep all stakeholders informed about the project. The project and its outcome have an impact on stakeholders. Explaining the plan to stakeholders has the potential to result in project commitment and bids. Because stakeholders approve and evaluate people who work with them, documentation is essential in all aspects of a project plan.
8. Hold an Introductory Meeting
A kickoff meeting is a practical step toward bringing stakeholders together to discuss the project in detail. Because everyone’s input is on the table during this process, trust is created among team members.
9. Create a Scope Declaration
One of the most important aspects of a project plan is the scope declaration. It determines the construction project’s final outcome. The scope of the project will alter and evolve throughout the duration of the project.
10. Create a Timetable
The project manager creates the construction project schedule, which team members utilize as a visual plan for building projects. Project schedules enable teams to break down the overall plan into smaller, more achievable parts. Planning and scheduling construction projects keep the crew on schedule and organized. They also help subcontractors and employees communicate with one another by offering extensive explanations of team members’ specialized timeframes in relation to the broader project timeline.
11. Examine Project Quality and Risk Management Plans
The activities that assure the finished product meets the expectations of both the customer and the sponsor are referred to as project quality. Project quality is all about preventing faults, not only examining the product and resolving them at the end. Setting measurements, standards, and acceptance criteria to guarantee that quality reviews and inspections are coordinated is part of implementing quality programs.
What is Construction Scheduling?
Project managers can begin scheduling once a construction plan is in place. Construction scheduling describes how a project can be completed within the time period and budget constraints. In that it forecasts project costs and timetables, a construction schedule is similar to a contractor’s bid.
Construction schedules require contractors to think critically about how they will complete a project, taking into account elements such as design, permitting, cost, and time. When construction scheduling is done effectively, it aids in the management of materials, workers, and construction equipment. It also allows for changes to the construction design if problems arise throughout the construction process.
A construction schedule includes:
- Deliverables of the project
- Management of resources
- Allocation of assets
- Completing construction tasks
- Task dependencies
- The deadlines and durations of construction tasks
- Costing and budgeting of involved parts
Conclusion
This is an overview of construction planning and scheduling. To be effective with your construction projects, you must prepare ahead of time to build a schedule that will allow you to complete your projects on time and within budget.
Construction planning and scheduling need a significant amount of time to establish and implement, but the time you save during the actual work will be more than the time you spent developing your plan and schedule.
FAQs
What is the distinction between project planning and project scheduling?
The planning process is largely concerned with selecting the necessary policies and processes in order to fulfill the project’s objectives. Scheduling is the process of converting project action plans for scope, time cost, and quality into an operational timetable.
What are the significance of construction planning and scheduling?
Construction planning and scheduling increase job efficiency; smart material management and resource distribution save costs and save time. Integrated project controls improve a team’s capacity to complete a project on time and within budget.
What comes first? Planning or scheduling?
A plan outlines how to handle an issue, whereas a timetable allocates times and dates to specific plan steps. So the plan comes initially, followed by the timetable, in the order of priority, urgency, or for any other reason.