Construction project control in the UK: Current practice, existing problems and recommendations for future improvement

Abstract

The aim of this study is to address the main deficiencies with the prevailing project cost and time control practice for construction projects in the UK. A questionnaire survey was carried out with 250 top companies to establish the current practice and identify existing problems. This was followed by in-depth interviews with 15 experienced practitioners from these companies in order to gain further insights of the identified problems, and their experience of good practice on how these problems can be tackled. On the basis of these interviews and synthesis with existing literature, a list of 65 good practice recommendations have been developed for the key project controls tasks: planning, monitoring, reporting and analysing. The Delphi method was then used, with the participation of a panel of 8 practitioner experts, to evaluate these improvement recommendations and to establish the degree of their relevance. After two rounds of the Delphi, these recommendations are put forward as "critical", "important", or "helpful" measures for improving project control practice in the UK construction industry.

Factor analysis of quality assurance practices in small and medium-sized road-construction projects: A South African perspective

“…Contractors need computerised systems that follow the value chain in construction-project delivery (Arditi & Gunaydin, 1997). This supports the notion that quality must be built-in during design and be achieved through communication, development and improvement (Bierman et al, 2013;Olawale & Sun, 2015).…”

“…The study showed that the proper process implementation of the quality-assurance system helped organisations better organise and synchronise their operations by documenting their procedures and clearly defining responsibilities and tasks among employees and subdivisions (Gotzamani & Tsiotras, 2001). Project management also includes practical implementation (Olawale & Sun, 2015). It is widely accepted and well-documented that implementing QA processes presents a good opportunity for organisations that want to respond to the challenge.…”

“…Several researches on factors affecting process implementation have proposed either specific factors or general factors (Aridti & Gunaydin, 1997;Ahadzie et al, 2008;Olawale & Sun, 2015). Their studies found conflict among project participants, material shortage, unavailability of resources, poor quality of available equipment, and unavailability of highly experienced qualified project managers.…”

Cost and Time Risk Management in Construction Projects

“…The main reason behind this it performs as benchmark/baseline to measure against. In the UK, a survey of consultant and contractors to ascertain the estimated time and cost of their construction projects [21].…”

Assessing Understanding of Planning and Scheduling Theory and Practice on Construction Projects

“…Moreover, the study results imply that project managers and their planners should be able to apply other schedule-performance measures for project-related factors (i.e., risk and quality control) rather than the more common approach of measuring performance in terms of consumed resources and related cost. More recently, Olawale and Sun (2015) revealed that the current practice of project time (schedule) and cost control and monitoring systems have been implemented based on ad-hoc management controls, rather than as regular monitoring systems against actual project milestones. In summary, the overall findings of the authors' study imply that there is a need to change current organizational behaviors in monitoring project schedules, by adopting a more efficient control system that should be strongly embedded into the whole construction process, as well as through all management and operational levels of the project.…”