When it comes to managing construction, creating efficient and effective plans and schedules early on in the project can help you save time and money and set your project up for success.
The construction industry involves a million moving parts, and many contractors lose time, money, and image because of costly delays. This is why we need a solid way to keep track of the scopes, costs, and budgets.
This is where construction planning comes in. Construction planning is crucial because it outlines the steps needed to complete the project and establishes the rules to follow to ensure it goes well. A detailed building plan can help them save time and money and ensure each project is completed with the highest quality possible. As a general contractor or a project manager, you must learn how to make your team more productive by creating a good construction planning process.
As the first step in construction planning, you must list all the policies, procedures, and processes you must set up to build and deliver your project. Once your construction plans are finalized, you must break down these extensive activities into smaller, workable tasks and the specific steps to be taken. You should also add a project’s requirements, such as resources, contacts, risks, and purchasing, to your workflow. These steps are essential for ensuring that all your project management tasks work together on a construction job from start to finish.
In this article, let us talk about construction planning, the different kinds of construction planning, and the steps to make a good construction plan.
Defining Construction Planning
Construction planning allows you to determine what needs to be done to build and deliver a project with a specific scope, schedule, and budget. It includes figuring out the deliverables, making a list of events in the correct order, hiring people to work on the project, and determining what materials and tools are needed. Since construction projects are often complex and challenging, project managers need a well-thought-out plan to stay on schedule and budget. It can also help make sure the job meets your client’s quality standards as a whole. A construction plan can help your team be more productive and efficient by making it easier for everyone to talk to each other.
The more details the construction plan has about your project, the less likely problems will arise during the building part. Before breaking the ground, there should be no holes in your building plan or schedule.
Why Construction Planning Can Make or Break The Project’s Success
Efficient construction planning helps ensure that jobs get done on time, on budget, to the required level of quality, and by safety rules for your team. It should include everything from construction crew scheduling to resource and procurement planning.
Planning clarifies what the owners, builders, and workers are responsible for, which leads to good communication and collaboration. It allows your team to take accountability for their tasks. By keeping accurate records of all the steps you take to plan a project, you will not only stay on track with this one but also create a resource for future projects.
When you plan a project, here are some benefits you can realize to ensure smooth project progress and delivery.
- Cut costs, maintain profitability, and monitor project prices simultaneously.
- Automating processes to make things run more smoothly will save you time.
- Document the project and easily share it with essential people
- ● Keep everyone informed and answer questions ahead of time to increase transparency.
- Ensure all your clients and other vital people know what to do
- Use the calendar to help project managers, workers, subcontractors, vendors, and everyone else talk to each other.
- Ensure extra workers, inspectors, freelancers, and others can join the project at the correct times.
Types of Construction Planning
Construction projects often vary in size, scope, and complexity. Depending on the size of the project and the type of construction work being done, managers can use several different planning methods.
In this section, let us look at the common types of construction planning.
Strategic Planning
The project manager can meet with various company planners and stakeholders to determine what needs to be done to ensure that the project meets their vision and exceeds their expectations. Once the project manager has all of this information, they will make a master construction delivery plan with clear instructions to make sure the team finishes the project on time.
Operation Planning
Once the client agrees to the overall plan, operational planning may begin. In this step, the construction teams work together to make a thorough plan with clear goals and steps to reach those goals in daily operations. They should be able to agree on the starting points and work together to finish reports and papers.
Business Planning
Upper management usually creates the business plan at the start of a project. This plan should explain the project and include a rough sketch of its design, instructions on how to carry it out, and tasks for each team member.
Resource Planning
By making a resource plan, a company can ensure that every project it works on has the staff, materials, and other resources it needs to be finished smoothly and on time. Project managers often create a timeline with important dates, goals, and where they plan to put the resources they need to keep everything in order. Construction crew management software can help streamline and optimize this process.
Procurement Planning
The procurement plan shows the project team where, when, and how they will get what they need to finish the project. The procurement plans ensure that suitable materials, labor, and tools are at the right time based on the building schedule. Delays can cause missed deadlines and extra costs, so planning carefully for buying is essential to avoid these issues.
How to Create an Efficient and Effective Construction Plan
Planning the project and making schedules for construction workers sets you up for success at all essential build steps. In this section, we will examine the different steps to creating a construction plan.
Conceptualization and Initiation
The first step is to examine the project’s requirements. Then, set goals, ensure they are possible, and decide if they fit your business well.
Specify The Details
Use the resources you gathered in the first step to make a broad plan for organizing the job. This is where you get more specific, even to the tiniest details. This includes making the complete list of tasks and funds, planning the crew, and getting all the necessary information to make a schedule.
Specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable, and time-based (SMART) goals will help ensure your project goals are linked to the business case.
Plot Schedules and Milestones
It would help if you were very clear about who is doing what and what they need to get their part of the project done before you can plan how long each task will take. Use your project plan to make a list of all the subcontractors who will be needed for each step. Ask them to guess how long it will take them to do their step and how long it will take them to get their tools together.
Milestones in a project, like finishing the foundation or adding plumbing, can be used to make a bigger plan that makes the project easier to see. Now that those steps are set take the more minor, easier-to-handle jobs and list them for each step. This will show you the big goals and the smaller steps you need to take to reach them.
Sort Jobs in Groups
A big part of project planning is determining which tasks are necessary and which could be put off. To ensure your plan covers everything, list everything you need to do and break it down into the simple steps you need to take to finish each. It also lets you see how delays in one part of the job affect the whole thing.
Communicate With Your Team
Gather your team to review the plan or add them to your construction employee scheduling software as you assign tasks. This allows everyone to see what you want them to do, ask questions, and find problems that might come up. Each crew member will be more engaged and effective if they know their job and how it contributes to the team’s success.
Tell your team the truth, ask for their thoughts, and make sure everyone has enough time to do their jobs well without getting stressed out.
Add Contingency Plans
Sometimes, you must change your plans, no matter how well you plan. That is normal and fine. Do not think that day one of your plans ends everything. It can be used as a tool, like a map. You can get there in more than one way. You can still get there with a good plan, even if something unexpected comes up.
Performance Review
All work must be reviewed and monitored to ensure it goes as planned. Your plan helps you reflect on what you did and make changes for what you want to do next.
You should check the schedule often to see how it’s going and to look for any problems you can see. Please keep it updated as each job goes along so you know what you’ll need in the future.
Project Completion
Once everything is finished and signed off on, the tasks on your plan for closing the project will ensure your client is pleased and ready for a smooth handoff.
