Whether you are new in construction or an experienced project manager with years of extensive experience up your sleeve, you know that staying on top of everything going on with your project progress is critical to finishing your projects. Delivering your projects on schedule and within budget while maintaining a high-quality standard is a challenging and stressful task. With so many moving parts and functions happening simultaneously, it can be challenging to keep track of everything and ensure that projects operate well.
When managing construction, you effectively ensure that everything goes smoothly and seamlessly according to plan. Keeping checks on daily job site development, appropriate scheduling tools, and adequately managing financials are crucial to tracking success. This article lets us look into some of the top reasons construction projects are delayed and several strategies to track your project’s progress efficiently. These project management strategies can help you get a more straightforward overview of your project, stick to deadlines, and keep your construction projects on schedule.
Top Reasons Why Your Construction Project Might Be Delayed
Construction projects are notoriously prone to delays – whether mismanagement, miscommunication, or unforeseen events. Sadly, a delayed construction project can be frustrating and costly for owners, contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers. Weather, equipment breakdowns, labor shortages, missing or erroneous data, project blunders, and disagreements are factors that might cause delays. Although some causes, like poor weather, are out of your control, most construction project delays may be avoided—this section list five of the top reasons why construction projects are delayed.
Wrong Estimates and Budget Errors
Making a mistake with a building estimate can be highly costly. Some jobs will be shut down for weeks, months, or even years. Accurate estimates ensure that enough money is available for supplies, wages, and other expenses. Once the task is started, real-time data access is essential to understand how the job progresses with the job costs.
Labor Shortage and Challenges
Today’s labor scarcity is one of the leading causes of construction delays. Many highly skilled workers have left the industry to pursue opportunities in other fields. Construction technology, luckily, is changing this dynamic by streamlining workflows for construction crew management. Allocating a work crew correctly can make or break a construction schedule. Utilizing software may help project managers streamline labor scheduling and time collection in the field and evaluate which crews are best suited for jobs.
Lack of Project Visibility across its Stakeholders
In project management for construction, it is your job to make decisions to keep initiatives moving forward. Construction projects can be supported on track and, in some situations, under budget by coordinating efforts and approving items rapidly. Lack of communication and collaboration can impede your project’s progress, resulting in unanticipated setbacks or more severe issues.
Everyone should be informed as new updates such as change orders or redesigns and data such as job progress or costs become available, whether from an owner, customer, in the field, or the office. If a conflict emerges, communication and cooperation audit trails can help the general contractor ensure that teams have all the necessary information to resolve issues before they become a project problem.
Contractor Relationships
For each project, general contractors typically deal with several subcontractors. It is critical to effectively manage timetables and schedules, compliance documentation, and collaboration with other contractors. Assume a contractor’s materials, inventory, and resources are spread too thin or are uninformed of a larger project’s deadline. In that instance, it may delay the completion of all subsequent jobs on the project. Alternatively, if a contractor fails to meet their bonding, licensing, or other contractual obligations, the project becomes more exposed to legal challenges and conflicts.
Inclement Weather
As we all know, weather is highly unpredictable, and realizing that extreme conditions are uncontrollable helps you be prepared and make a difference. Allow for a slower pace in the timetable if the weather is hot and humid or cold and snowy and maintain safe crew practices. When bad weather strikes, providing waterproof gear and appropriate jobs to a work crew can help keep things moving. Another aspect of weather that you can influence is how your business may be affected in the case of a natural disaster.
Why Staying on Top of Your Project’s Every Intricate Detail is Important to its Success
More often than not, running projects without adequate project management can lead to a disaster. Without it, the project has no baseline or framework that can guide the project through its ups and downs, disputes, and disasters. Excellent project management brings clients and teams together, sets a vision for a successful project, and ensures that everyone understands what is required to keep on track. It means much more than maintaining project management’s iron triangle in check by delivering on time, budget, and project scope. It allows a smooth and seamless construction experience for every stakeholder.
5 Strategies to Help You Keep Track of Your Construction Project’s Progress
Keeping your construction projects on track to achieve their deadlines is no easy achievement. Weather delays, costly rework, a lack of resources, and subcontractor default are just a few factors that might throw your schedule off. Damages and fines for missing a deadline can wipe out your profits and harm your construction company’s reputation. This article lists five strategies – from simple tips like improving communication within the team to using technology such as a construction inventory app that can help you keep track of your project more efficiently.
Stay Within Deadlines with Effective Project Scheduling
Construction scheduling is crucial since it affects the project’s success. Building a project without a schedule is like starting construction without a map and being blindfolded. A construction schedule shows you exactly what tasks, activities, resources, and costs are required to finish the project. It acts as a detailed handbook that guides you through the entire endeavor.
The schedule will serve as a source of truth throughout the project and adhering to it will keep projects on track. Keeping track of progress requires ensuring that all critical stakeholders are on the same page. To keep everyone informed, you can share schedule items with your team, subcontractors, and clients.
Develop Contingency Plans
A project might go off track in a variety of ways. Constructing contingency plans that can be implemented swiftly can go a long way toward reducing and resolving problems before they become out of hand.
If you are behind schedule, you can assign overtime to some employees or hire more staff or resources to get your project back on track. With the rest of the project team, brainstorm potential schedule delays and create contingency measures for each one so that you will be prepared no matter what obstacles may be encountered.
Focus on Constant Communication and Close Collaboration
Staying on track and completing projects require effective communication and close collaboration. Establish procedures and practices for your partners to follow to notify you when they are behind schedule or suffering delays. This will allow you to begin changing your schedule before the problems escalate into unmanageable, causing you to miss your deadline.
Collaboration in a project entails more than just everyone completing chores on time. It involves establishing a trusting and respectful connection with all parties and completing a project. To keep your construction timetable on track, you’ll need to collaborate and coordinate your activities. Good communication and keeping everyone on the same page go hand in hand with collaboration. It necessitates trusting all parties and appreciating their contributions as valuable team members.
Monitor and Document All Progress
Detailed daily reports will help you keep track of your progress. Keep track of how well you adhere to your schedule. Keep a close lookout for any suspicious signs that you are running behind schedule. Examine how closely your accurate task completion timetable matches your master schedule. Pay special attention to locations that went over budget or were completed ahead of schedule. This helps you improve future project planning and scheduling and compare this project’s performance to similar projects in the past.
Use Construction Technology to Help You Track Your Progress
Using technology to measure progress on your construction jobs, such as construction scheduling software, can help project managers maximize their time, effectively and efficiently manage all projects, and enhance the company’s profitability. By providing a real-time picture of the inventory, equipment, materials, worker status, project progress and productivity, and timeline transparency, construction software can help keep every one of your stakeholders on the same page.
Many contractors still rely on old-fashioned spreadsheets or on-premises software solutions, which means collaboration and communication between the field and the office is frequently delayed. Luckily, these concerns can be addressed by construction management software for builders and contractors that can streamline processes by automating procedures and providing real-time data and analytical capabilities.
