What are the Pain points of a construction site engineer?
Our Construction industry is one of the least in technology adoption and challenges faced by them are many in technology adoption. Just to understand the reality, I was planning to check with few of my friends who are working in construction companies.
I got a chance to speak with one of my friends who has spent more than a decade in construction. At present, he is managing the construction of township for a particular community. They were building around 400 houses approximately. The stakeholders involved in his project are his supervisors, Architects (outsourced), site engineers, labor contractors, equipment contractors, head of his department and other top officials. He is the first point of contact for all the contractors and architects to whom they have outsourced the work.
During our conversation, he has mentioned about the day to day challenges faced by him. I have listed out the problems that are relevant to project management alone.
1. Delay in Approval or Decision Making
While constructing a building, the major challenges lie in managing the unexpected work. It can be a rock lying in the foundation, absence of crane, design execution challenges etc. The Major problem is not the challenges; it is about how the problem is handled.
The decision-making time is the major hindrance for most of the work. The bottleneck for the decision makers to have all the relevant information to make the decision. They spend enormous time searching, requesting data from various stakeholders. The delay in decision making/approval from superiors and other stakeholders leads to waste of time, resources which in turn waste money and he is answerable for most of the things
2. No record for given approvals
Most of the time the approvals given by his supervisor/manager, are over the phone. If they face any problem in future, the supervisor escapes (either intentional or non-intentional) from the problem saying that it wasn’t brought to his notice and he doesn’t give any approval. Lack of organized and trackable communication is a challenge for people to take ownership and held accountable for decisions taken.
3. Delay in Information Sharing
Most of the information are recorded on paper or notebooks manually. If any information has to be shared across the stakeholders, in turn, someone has to carry the files or notebooks to the respective person’s place. These days professionals find innovative ways to use instant messaging tools like Whatsapp, but even with that after a month's time, they lose track of what has been decided a week back. The delay, in turn, leads to delay in decision making and delay in approvals or delay in next action items
4. Missing/Spoiled Documents
Many times he carries the design document to their site. It gets spoiled due to the rough conditions at the site or found missing due to misplacement. Some engineers do keep hard copies of the documents on the site but always are not sure if that is the latest approved document.
5. No Proper format for recording the details
Apart from him, there are few other site engineers who manage the site along with him. There is no uniformity among them in recording the details or reporting the status at the end of the day/week or during a particular phase. Everybody will fill data in a particular format due to non-availability of standard format. Data can be anything that ranges from material consumed or labors utilized or crane utilization etc. Due to this they miss some important data that is needed for calculation during billing or auditing
6. Difficult to coordinate with all the stakeholders
In the current project he has to manage, architects, manager, contractors for execution, contractors for equipment, junior site engineers etc. Each of the stakeholders has their own hierarchies. So it is difficult to coordinate with each of them on the problems or status reports, and decisions were taken.
7. Delay in design change process
When he faces any challenges while executing the design given by Architect, he has to follow a long process. First, he has to report to his supervisor, then informs the Architect. The Architect has to inspect the site, go back to the office and make the new design. Then they need approval for the estimation of new design etc. This delay in the process of change management too consumes more time and money. And tracking these also challenge for a project that runs for years.
8. Unable to track the record of earlier work
Generally, he faces a challenge of tracking the earlier activities done. Usually, it is done on paper and if they need any record for reference, most of the time they found it misplaced or have to spend a lot of time searching for it.
9. No Visibility to top management on ground realities
Several challenges faced by him which were reported to the managers are not taken to the top management level. The real picture of the problem is not notified and the site engineers become responsible for the delay in the projects and shown in poor light. Escalating the issue to the right people with right information is a challenge he faces most of the time.
10. Poor Material Management
Every day they have to keep track of materials consumed and plan for required materials for forthcoming planned activities. Most of the time there will be poor communication among the procurement team, site engineers on the availability and leads to over purchase or shortage of some materials.
The pain point doesn’t end here. This is the outcome of our few mins of chat. If we dig deeper there will be lots and lots of problem. Though the sample size is very small and negligible, it gives some picture on the day to day problem faced by the site engineer to some extent. But this clearly shows that there is no proper project management and no technology based solution is used in the process.
For a successful completion of the project, planning and execution should gel well. Planning is always a Top-down process and execution is a Bottom – Up process. The outcome of this discussion is the execution challenges.
We can’t just ignore these problems. Since site engineers are the face of execution, their problems have to be addressed soon. Else it will definitely lead to waste of time and money. If we fail to find any solution to optimize the process, then it affects the quality of construction, and for owners, it is all about profit margin.
I would like to hear your comments on the existing problems similar to above mentioned which will help me to understand further.
Note: Originally posted in my another blog
https://neewly.wordpress.com/2017/01/30/what-are-the-pain-points-of-a-construction-site-engineer/
Image Credits: Pixabay
During our conversation, he has mentioned about the day to day challenges faced by him. I have listed out the problems that are relevant to project management alone.
1. Delay in Approval or Decision Making
While constructing a building, the major challenges lie in managing the unexpected work. It can be a rock lying in the foundation, absence of crane, design execution challenges etc. The Major problem is not the challenges; it is about how the problem is handled.The decision-making time is the major hindrance for most of the work. The bottleneck for the decision makers to have all the relevant information to make the decision. They spend enormous time searching, requesting data from various stakeholders. The delay in decision making/approval from superiors and other stakeholders leads to waste of time, resources which in turn waste money and he is answerable for most of the things
2. No record for given approvals
Most of the time the approvals given by his supervisor/manager, are over the phone. If they face any problem in future, the supervisor escapes (either intentional or non-intentional) from the problem saying that it wasn’t brought to his notice and he doesn’t give any approval. Lack of organized and trackable communication is a challenge for people to take ownership and held accountable for decisions taken.
3. Delay in Information Sharing
Most of the information are recorded on paper or notebooks manually. If any information has to be shared across the stakeholders, in turn, someone has to carry the files or notebooks to the respective person’s place. These days professionals find innovative ways to use instant messaging tools like Whatsapp, but even with that after a month's time, they lose track of what has been decided a week back. The delay, in turn, leads to delay in decision making and delay in approvals or delay in next action items
4. Missing/Spoiled Documents
Many times he carries the design document to their site. It gets spoiled due to the rough conditions at the site or found missing due to misplacement. Some engineers do keep hard copies of the documents on the site but always are not sure if that is the latest approved document.
5. No Proper format for recording the details
Apart from him, there are few other site engineers who manage the site along with him. There is no uniformity among them in recording the details or reporting the status at the end of the day/week or during a particular phase. Everybody will fill data in a particular format due to non-availability of standard format. Data can be anything that ranges from material consumed or labors utilized or crane utilization etc. Due to this they miss some important data that is needed for calculation during billing or auditing
6. Difficult to coordinate with all the stakeholders
In the current project he has to manage, architects, manager, contractors for execution, contractors for equipment, junior site engineers etc. Each of the stakeholders has their own hierarchies. So it is difficult to coordinate with each of them on the problems or status reports, and decisions were taken.
7. Delay in design change process
When he faces any challenges while executing the design given by Architect, he has to follow a long process. First, he has to report to his supervisor, then informs the Architect. The Architect has to inspect the site, go back to the office and make the new design. Then they need approval for the estimation of new design etc. This delay in the process of change management too consumes more time and money. And tracking these also challenge for a project that runs for years.
8. Unable to track the record of earlier work
Generally, he faces a challenge of tracking the earlier activities done. Usually, it is done on paper and if they need any record for reference, most of the time they found it misplaced or have to spend a lot of time searching for it.
9. No Visibility to top management on ground realities
Several challenges faced by him which were reported to the managers are not taken to the top management level. The real picture of the problem is not notified and the site engineers become responsible for the delay in the projects and shown in poor light. Escalating the issue to the right people with right information is a challenge he faces most of the time.
10. Poor Material Management
Every day they have to keep track of materials consumed and plan for required materials for forthcoming planned activities. Most of the time there will be poor communication among the procurement team, site engineers on the availability and leads to over purchase or shortage of some materials.
The pain point doesn’t end here. This is the outcome of our few mins of chat. If we dig deeper there will be lots and lots of problem. Though the sample size is very small and negligible, it gives some picture on the day to day problem faced by the site engineer to some extent. But this clearly shows that there is no proper project management and no technology based solution is used in the process.
For a successful completion of the project, planning and execution should gel well. Planning is always a Top-down process and execution is a Bottom – Up process. The outcome of this discussion is the execution challenges.
We can’t just ignore these problems. Since site engineers are the face of execution, their problems have to be addressed soon. Else it will definitely lead to waste of time and money. If we fail to find any solution to optimize the process, then it affects the quality of construction, and for owners, it is all about profit margin.
So it is time to analyse the problem at the bottom level and address it asap.
I would like to hear your comments on the existing problems similar to above mentioned which will help me to understand further.
Note: Originally posted in my another blog
https://neewly.wordpress.com/2017/01/30/what-are-the-pain-points-of-a-construction-site-engineer/
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