Risk management and occupational Health and Safety

MSA Safety 10096486 Style 1-D Harness Vest, Standard Size

Construction site is always a dangerous place to be for a person that is not well trained. Accident can happened at any time and at any place within construction site. Below is the graphical show the fatal accident form year 1993 until 2013  publish by http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/fatals.htm



                                           Risk Management and Construction
                                           Construction Management

Eventhough the rate have been continueously decline but construction site still remain dangerous. The graph show above is property of HSE which more detail can be read through their website.

As contractor or construction personnel there is a great need for us to know(if not in detail) what are the risk that we are facing when we involve in construction work. Generally, in my opinion the risk are as below;

1. Accident at construction work site to site personnel due to fall from high place, accidentally contact with moving or revolving machinery and construction equipment.
2. Accident due to construction activities involving public
3. Burglaries at construction site
4. Damages to third party properties due to construction activities.

                                         Risk Management and Construction
                                         Construction Management

All the risk above involving the health and safety issue and definitely involving lost of effective working hours and money. How to prevent and minimised those problem? In term of monetary, it is a compulsory that employer covered their self and his employee(s) with insurances. There is two common type of insurance that normally being requested by Owner of the project. Those two insurance are Contractor's All Risk and Workmen's Compensation insurance. In my opinion the another element that sometime might be required is Insurance that can cover inclusive of Third Party properties. This mostly required if the construction work is adjacent to other properties or within the existing properties and the chances for the properties being damages due to construction activities is high at all the time. With the coverage of those insurance part of the monetary effect towards construction cost already being take care off.

Having covered by insurance is only part of the mitigation in alleviate the effect of risk in construction . However, the most important part is injuries or fatality that might happened with in the construction site or to the public. To address this matter there are some steps or measure that can be taken. Part of it are;

1. Create awareness among construction workers on possible danger with-in construction work place by having "Tool Box Talk " of Safety briefing every morning conducted by Safety officer or Safety Supervisor.
2. Having a proper maintenance schedule on any construction machinery, Site vehicle, plants and construction equipment to ensure that it is in good condition.
3. Provide signages or implement any suitable method to notify public and workers where ever necessary with in construction vicinity.
4. Only qualified person allowed to operate or handle construction machineries, Plant or construction equipment.
5. Appointment of qualified person or manager to oversee the safety measure that need and have been implement at construction work site.
6. Provide and maintain Personnel Protective Equipment to all construction workers.

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                                         Construction Management

Delay and Extension of time Application in construction project

Extension of time (E.O.T) is one of the contract clause which is helpful to all contractor to prevent the Liquidated and ascertained damages (L & AD) being imposed to them due to delay. Not to say that with the Extension of Time, contractor do not incurred losses, but in actual fact it did minimised it. With the granted of Extension of time, Contractor still need to extend the work insurances and other overhead cost such as rental of site office,site support staff and ect. but it do stop the L & AD being imposed.

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Third Edition (PMBOK Guides)

Enterprise Contract Management: A Practical Guide to Successfully Implementing an ECM Solution

Practical Contract Management

Application of  Extension of time, base on the contract clauses is always base on what does it allow for. Some of the reason that allow are as follows;

1. Delay due to Superintending Officer instruction which was issued under certain clause in the contract

2. Exceptionally increment weather,

3. By force majeure

4. Delay in giving site possession to contractor,

5 Delay by other contractor engaged by employer in executing parts of the work which for part of the contract

6. by the contractor in ability for reason beyond his control and which he could not reasonably have foreseen at the date of closing of tender of his contract,

7. by reason of  any action due to civil disturbance

and any reason allow in the particular contract.

However to make an application,  normally, there are clauses in the contract that contractor need to satisfy or follow. For example, Delay due to Superintending Officer instruction (which was issued not due to contractor negligence), in which a stop work order was issued due to design change for certain works which affecting other works and will resulted in delay of the project completion. This reason, for sure it is not due to contractor negligence. As such contractor is entitle for extension of time and also possibly entitle to claim loss and expense ( if allow in the contract).

Also part and parcel of the application is the supporting document. As contractor, all the significant event shall be properly documented and recorded. For example, some of the following document might be necessary.

1. Master and detailed work program (A work program in which shows the sequence and logic of works) before the event.

2. Revised work program ( Work program which show when will the new expected completion date for the project after incorporated the event)

3. Official instruction from Superintending officer (letter)

4. Notice from contractor with regard to the event which mentioned that the event will caused delay.( if the instruction is going to be issued after or few days before the date of start work for the particular work as planned or schedule in original master work program or original detailed work program)

5. The event chronology

6. Photos (if any)

7. calculation on number of days that contractor entitled for.

8. Site diary 

9. minutes of meeting

10. contract clause which mentioned that contractor are entitle for the Extension of time.

However, contractor need to be aware on the other clauses in the contract in which contractor need to fulfilled. For example; notice to superintending officer shall be submitted with-in 7 days from the date of the event.

Not all contract having the same clauses or requirements, thus. contractor need to know what is allow in their contract. For instant, time frame to submit notice to superintending officer due to an event. Some contract might specified that the notice shall be submitted with in 14 days from the even occurred, some might be 30 days but other might be 7 days. Hence we need to be aware of those clauses.

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Third Edition (PMBOK Guides)

Enterprise Contract Management: A Practical Guide to Successfully Implementing an ECM Solution Practical Contract Management

Construction Industry in year 2014

Year 2013 is a year that full of challenges to all of the construction industry players. Some might have it as a nice Year but for some it is not a prosperous year. Whatever it is, soon the year of 2013 will become history.

As we are approaching the new year, 2014, let we start equip our self with fresh strategy to tackle new challenges in this construction field. Embrace the technology and  increase our knowledge in construction. We might need to refurbish our machinery, plant and Equipment for 2014. We might need to increase our manpower to fulfils the next year commitment. We might need to start looking for new strategy to secure more contract.

The bottom line is, how good have we done in year 2013 in solving any issue that we facing with regards to this construction work. It will always be good to look back on what we had done and learn from there for betterment. For the year to come let us refresh our knowledge in this industry. Here, in this blog, There are articles that are useful for next year planning. Just take a look at the archive and you will find it useful.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2014.

Estimating construction works

Estimating construction cost is always a tedious task to do. No how it is, this process is the most important part of the work before contractor even decide to take the work or not. However it is always a good practice to do the estimation before commitment is make to any of the construction work.

Normally there is two type of conventional contract. The two type are Contract with Bill of Quantities and Lump Sum Contract. Regardless what type of contract that contractor are dealing with, the different is Lump Sum contract normally do not include the quantity in their document because regardless of the quantity, the price that contractor offered is count. This type of contract normally do not entertained any type of claim that involve the increase in any quantity unless it increment is substantially affecting the cost. Some country have their own set of rules that need to be adhere to in order t make such claims.

Referring to the topic today, Estimating Construction Works. In general I would like to say that the overall work cost consist of three(3) major structure. The structure is The Actual cost for the physical works, The Preliminaries and general and the third structure is profit margin.

The Actual cost. What does it meant? The Actual cost is the estimation on the cost that needed to build and complete the major scope of works. Lets say it is to build a guard house. To build the guard house what are the things that involve that without those item contractor will never be able to complete the works. There are four(4) major item that must be include in this estimation. The four(4) major items are Construction Materials, Plants and Machineries, Man powers and wastage. However, for the Plants and machineries and manpower it is always tied up to the duration that needed to construct the guard house. Apart from these, the materials is always govern by the quantity and the unit price. For a Lump sum Contract, contractor have to do their own Quantity take off exercise.

The second structure is The Preliminaries and General. Among the item that always fall under this category are:-
1. Insurances
2. Performance bond
3. Site office, transport provision for the superintending Officer and site store.
4. Electricity, Water and Telecommunication,
5. Cost for compliance to Local Authorities Regulations
6. Mobilisation and demobilisation
7. As-built drawings
8. Relocation of existing Services or properties
9. Reporting and meeting expenses
10. Any other item that is not necessary required to complete the works but needed to ensure the smooth flow of the whole works.

Normally under Lump sum Contract this structure is only describe as preliminaries and general as one item. Hence contractor need to do their own breakdown item in order to have a build up cost for this Preliminaries and general total cost.

The third Structure is The profit margin.This profit margin is depend on how much contractor want to make. out from the project.

There is lots of software out there that can expedite this cost estimation work.

PROJECT SCHEDULING OR PLANNING, WHO'S RESPONSIBLILITY IS IT?

Before we proceed further let us look through the definition and the importance of project scheduling or project planning.

Definition of project scheduling: 

Project Scheduling is A Process of listing the detail breakdown of works to on how to achieve the project goal by determined the when to start and finished, what is the work sequence and who is responsible for the task.

The important of Project Scheduling:

Project scheduling is a tool that will guide a construction project from the beginning until completion and a tool to maximize the profit for a project.

In any type of planning or scheduling the crucial part of it is input that need to be as accurate as it can be. To have all the required input, the scheduler will not only need his own experience and knowledge but also input from other parties within his organization. Those parties are as the chart below.

CHART 1

Refer back to the chart 1 above, there is few parties involve. Each of this party will provide the scheduler with different type of information. By gathering all of this essential data and incorporate it into the work program or project schedule, a project will have a proper, practical and realistic target date for completion. The Table 2 below show us what are the information that we can get from each of the different parties involve.

TABLE 2

Base on Chart 1 and Table 2, a proper and realistic schedule is everybody Job. If either one of the element is missing or not captured in the project schedule it can be a misleading schedule which must be avoid. As an answer to our question “Who’s responsible is the project scheduling?” we summarized it as it is the responsible of the Project Scheduler. He or She is the key personnel that will get the project Schedule done with the input from various parties involve.

Making money or Losing money in Construction.

Why contractor loosing money when doing construction? There is few reason why contractor always mentioning that they are loosing money a particular project. If we wanted to list down all of the reason, it will be quite a number of it. However let we know some of the reason.

1. Poor Project Planning by contractor.

2. Lack of understanding or knowledge on the current market trend for resources.

3. Ignorant on the principal, "make thing right at the first attempt".

4. Fail to ascertained all necessary cost that is not reflected in the contract Bill of quantity or drawing.

5.Bidding a project for the sake of winning it without thinking and analysed the pricing that been inserted during bidding process.

6. Fail to examine each of single page of the tender document  when doing the estimation.

7. Fail to notice what is the term and condition stated in the tender document during tendering process.

First of all let we jump to the item no.6 and no.7. Item no.6 is related to item no.7. Why is this so? The reason is if the bidder do not read carefully the tender document, he will tend to lose the important information which is not clearly stated in the bill of quantity. This scenario  always happened in a Lump Sum Contract. For instant, Inside the contract there might be special condition of contract which form part of the contract. What written inside the special condition of contract is Contractor need to abide to local authority, authority body or government agency rules and regulation. Then we derive from this clause, Who are these local Authority? 

Now we go deeper. Local authority,  can be any authority that have direct involvement in your project. For example Department of Occupation Safety and Health(DOSH), Local Council, Construction Industry Board, Board of engineers, Labour Department, Board of contractor under government and National board of Environment. Each of this department or authority body have their own rules and regulation which contractor need to comply with. For instant DOSH. When you do a construction project, You must first registered your project with them. registration might be no cost implication but the set of rules that you need to follow will required you to provide enough safety equipment and precaution. As and example, You are required to hire a full time safety office. how much is the cost that you need to pay for the Safety Officer for the whole duration of the project? second, You must provide all necessary safety gear for all of your workers at site. How much will it cost? This two item will easily cost you thousands dollar per month and just if imagine if your project duration is one year. How much do you think the cost will be? I have seen lot contractor underestimate this item or ignorant to this rules. When the project awarded to them then only they start grumble that they did not priced for it. Who's mistake is this? Sometime inside the Bill of quantity it only mention as "Contractor to provide all necessary safety and heath personal,equipment and ect for the whole duration of project" or even it being lump into an item as preliminaries and General. Then when this happened in the Bill of Quantity contractor will just insert some Amount which is most of the time under estimated. At the end of the day this item alone had cost a huge some to contractor.

As for item 7. worse case scenario, the special condition of contract does not allow for any claim on lost and expense due to whatever reason and also it does not allow for any price fluctuation claim for construction material as per current market rate for the month particular month when the purchase are make. If the increase of material price is very marginal, most probably contractor still can absorb the the cost. But if it happened as the scenario during the year 2004 until 2007 where the price of steel and other construction material gone up substantially,  What will be the cost that contractor need to pay? most probably it will contribute to a huge losses to contractor. Hence it is very important that during tendering stage contractor need to know what is the basis and the content of the tender document.

For all contractor, be cautious with the term and condition in the tender document when you do your estimation. If you already gone through these scenario don't let it happened again and for those who have not come across this type of rule and regulation, let this article become and important information for you to minimised your will be loses.

Project scheduling

“I have been in this construction industries for years by now; I got the experience and knowledge. That is why I don’t really need to produce a work schedule. It’s all in my head.”

Have you ever met a person that telling you the same reason as above? If you throw me that question my answer is “YES”.

There is no doubt that those who already successfully completed construction projects already know all the sequence of works and what does it takes to complete a project. However I still want to emphasized that it is important to have a systematic work schedule. The reason is you are not going to supervised each and single task of a project by yourself. In actual fact, if you are project managers or coordinators you will have to deal with your construction supervisors, subcontractors, client, consultant and suppliers. All of these parties will be interested to know what your work schedule is. The information stated in your project will enable them to delegates, giving instruction, executing and monitoring the progress for whatever necessary works to complete the project. Without your project schedule every parties involve will be in the dark.

Why do I emphasize that it is important for you to have a proper project schedule? Here is the reason why?

Project scheduling will allow us to analysed our cash flow against our work plan whether what we plan can be achieve with the current available cash in hand, current machinery, plant and equipment and also manpower that we have. After analysed , if we found out we can’t complete the project with our current resources, then we have to explore other option on how to complete the project before we make any decision to proceed with the work schedule. In other words Project scheduling will help us to minimize our losses in term of Value.

Work without a plan is a plan to fail. Without a project schedule we will be lost. We do not know when to start, how long it take for us to complete the project, what is the sequence of work, When to start our procurement of material, when to mobilized essential machinery to start a particular task, what is the effect of public holiday and bad weather have to our plan and the list goes on. Missing the step of preparing a proper project scheduling can lead to a situation that it is too late for us to amend the damages that already happened during construction period.

 It is a compulsory requirement in most of the contract document. We are required by our client to submit our project schedule for our project for their approval.

It is a tool that will help us to defend our self when we have to stop part of the work due to the instruction by the client which leads to the delay in completion of the project.

It is very essential instrument when we decide to make a claim for extension of time and also to claim for our loss and expense (if allow in the contract). If approval to our claim is granted it can save us from the liquidated and ascertain damages which might be imposed to us as per mention inside the contract (if any).

Project Schedule will help us to monitor our project health whether we are ahead of schedule, on track, slightly delay or even fall under sick project which is bound for contract termination.

Project schedule will help us to instruct our team on what task to do, when must it start and when must it finish.

All of the reason listed above, have their impact on the monetary value. To summarize all of this we can say that a Project scheduling is a tool that will guide a construction project from the beginning until completion and a tool to maximize the profit for a project. As what business person had and will always have in their head, “The purpose of making Business is to make more money not to lose it in whatever circumstances”.

Critical Path Method in project scheduling.

Critical path is an important element in project scheduling. Every scheduler or planner officer need to identify which is the task(s) that will form the critical path of the project. Critical path always consist of series of task or work that must not be delayed, start or commencement date and must finish on a fixed date. If there is any delay occurred in commencement of any task or work that form a critical path, then there is very high possibilities that the project going to be delay in completion. When this situation happened, contractor will have to plan for a catch-up program to make sure that the project can be completed with-in the approved construction period. However in this section we will not discussing on the catch-up program or plan.

How to determine the critical path of a project? In actual fact, regardless of what scheduling software that planner(s) officer or Scheduler(s) officer used to produce a work program or work plan for a project, the basic theory of the Critical path calculation is always the same for any brand of project scheduling software.

There are two types of critical path calculation that can be used to identify a critical path. The two types of calculation are Forward pass calculation and Backward Pass calculation.

Forward pass calculation can be used to determine when or on what date a project can be completed. The calculation will start from the beginning of the project and at the end we will be able to know when a project can be completed with estimated numbers of resources that available.

Backward pass calculation can be used when we are given a fixed date on when to complete a project. This method always required us to analyze the availability of our resources and their output in order to complete the project as required. By knowing our capacity of resources we will be able to estimate the duration required to complete each and single task of a project. With this information than we start the calculation from the given finished date and we will know the latest date we must start our work which normally known as late start.

Theoretically, Critical path will always having the same figure for the early start and the late start. Thus there is no number of floating days allow. Mathematically the float day is equal to “0”. All series of task or works that have no float days or “0” floating days will fall in a critical path of a project.

Critical path in Microsoft project, by default is always colored with red in Gantt Chart.

WORK PROGRAM BY MICROSOFT PROJECT : STEP BY STEP GUIDE

Work program is an important element in any Construction project. It is a document where it will become a guide for those involve in the project  on when to start and complete a particular project component or task. In actual fact work program is contractor plan on when to start the project and how we plan to complete the hole project. A project without work program, in other words, is a project without target and is about to fail. As the successful person always say “ FAILURE TO PLAN IS A PLAN TO FAIL”.

There is numbers of software that can be utilized to create a work program. Among them are Microsoft Projects, Primavera and  Agile project planning. However in this article, we will show how to create a work program by using MICROSOFT PROJECT. We are using MICROSOFT PROJECT 2010 VERSION (Trial Version Copy)

.

Microsoft project can be purchase on-line through Microsoft website.

How to create the work program using Microsoft Project?  Below is basic step to step.

Step 1:

Open your Microsoft project software. Below is how the Microsoft project look like.

Under Default display you will find there is eight (8) columns available. The column named as indicator, task, duration, start, finish, predecessor, resources and add new column.

 Step 2:

Set up the working time for your calendar. This can be done by clicking on the FILE tab.

A display like this will appear on your screen. Next, click the “OPTION” button on the display page.  A “Project option” will appear as below.

At this “Project Option” page, click the “schedule” button. It will bring you to the display as below.

On this page, you can start customized your working days, working hours and many more to suite your requirement. One you done with the option you can save your file under a name.

  

 Step 3:

Start inserting all of the scope of works that necessary to complete the whole project. To do this. Click on the “TASK” tab. The window is as below.

Inside the “Task Name” column, you can start type in ever task that is needed to complete the whole Project. Below is how the completed task looks like.

After finish key-in all the task. Now you can arrange the task into level.

Step 4:

Select the task that you want it to be a sub-task to the earlier task , then click the indent task icon to make it a sub-task.

Below is how the partially complete Work Program look like after the task being arrange into different level.

  

Step 5:

Insert the Duration for each of the task in the Duration column. Below how it look like after you insert the duration.

Step 6:

Insert your start date for the first task that you plan to become the first activity for the whole project. This first task should be a task that must start in order for the project to start.  The start date must be inserted in the Start column. Your finish date for the task will be automatically calculated by Microsoft project software. Your next subsequence task start and finish date will be calculated automatically after you insert the Predecessor for each of the Task.

Below is how your partially completed work program looks like.

Step 7:

For each task in your work program, insert the predecessor task number in the predecessor column.. Predecessor is a task that starts before this task. By doing this it will link the task to another task. Below is how the work program appears on your screen after you completed this step.

Now after this step 7, your already complete the whole scheduling works. This is already a complete work program. In actual on screen display you will see it like the picture below.

From the display, you can see on your right, there is bar chart for each of the task and it is link to another task. This chart show how each of the task link to another or in another word sequence of each task. The arrow from one bar to another bar is showing the sequence of the task which automatically generated when you key-in each of the predecessor for each of the task. This chart is called Gantt chart.

In real construction project there is lot of task involve in order for contractor to complete the whole project. In this situation we need to identify which is the longest sequence of task that will be critical in the project. In other words, if one of the task is delayed it will delayed the whole project. How to Identify it by using Microsoft Project Software. Read the step 8 below.

  

Step 8:

To identify the longest critical sequence of task in a project click the “FORMAT TAB”.

Under the “Format” word (as picture above), you can see the word “Critical task”, “Slack” and “Late Task”. Click the box next to the” Critical Task”.  It will automatically generate which sequence of work is Critical. This method is called “Critical Path Method”.

Once you are done with this action, it should display a series of red bar which these are the critical task that MUST NOT BE DELAYED IT START AND FINISHED DATE. Contractor needs to Start this these critical task as planned in the work program or you will not be able to complete the whole project as planned.

 The picture below is showing the Critical task of the project and also it is the Critical path for the whole project. Delaying either one of the task within this path resulted in delay in completion of the project.

Site management for contractor.

Site management is a very important field that shall not be neglected by any contractor. Armed your project with proper site management personnel which will help contractor to ensure a smooth work flow environment and in return will help in the success of a project.

Site management is inclusive of 

1. Site safety

2. Work place arrangement eg: site access road, storage and machinery yard and site office.

3. Site personnel

4. Sequence of works

5. Documentation

Each of the listed area above, need to be properly address and plan in order to make the site management that is going to be implement will achieve its objective.

A construction site that was operated without a well-planned site management always resulted as an unsafe site. For example, a site without proper site management, we can see construction waste is everywhere and this will pose a great danger. If accident happened, there will be lost in working hours and this lost is equal to lost in productivity which can be translate to money.

As we already know the important of site management in construction, now the question is how to put it into practice? The key to a good site management is to develop the site management plan or guideline. The content of this site management plan shall consist of all of the listed above. Personnel need to be appointed and their authority and responsibility clearly mentioned. layout of the site shall also be include to show the planned location of any important machinery yard, office, store or even where a heavy machinery shall be station during construction to ensure smooth activity.

There is some more parameter that can be included and it depends on the type of construction. If one cannot develop your site management plan it can always be out source by engaging professional.

Part of site management is the arrangement of site. The picture below can explained what site arrangement is.

Risk management in Road construction

Risk management in construction is a field that should not be put aside by any contractor. Risk management is important to help us delivered the end product with in the stipulated time frame without lost or minimum lost in our profit margin and the most important is maintaining our good reputation.

Road construction,just like other construction work, it is prone to risk. Whatever risk that involve in construction, at the end of the day, it will count as dollar and cent. In-view of this situation, contractor have to find ways to mitigate this loses.

How to minimized and address this issue? Before we discuss any further, let's take a look at what is some of the scope of work involve. Below are some of the scope of work involve.

1. Earthwork

2. Bridge

3. Sub-base

4. Road-base

5. Tar seal ( ACB,ACW,Tack coat & Prime coat)

6. Road paint or Road marking

7. Guard rail & other road furniture

8. Street lighting.

As listed above, we can see there is eight(8) trades involve to roughly complete the road.Indirectly this information is telling us that we need eight specialist team. Then how to relate this with risk management? Here how to address this. Since we already know what trade involve, The next step is doing brain storming. This is important to identify any possible risk that will involve in each of the trade. This is basic rule of risk management. It will be impossible to come out with risk management plan without knowing what possible risk to take into account. The root to risk management is " what is the risk that we expecting to occur with-in those trade". Only by knowing what is the risk that we can start working the plan that is the best management or solution to prevent or minimized the risk.

Now let we look in to the earthwork trade. What is the possible risk that we have that will prevent us from completing this task as per required time frame as agreed in the contract. Let list down some of the possible risk.

Possible risk in earthwork.

1. Bad weather
2. Machine breakdown
3. increase in fuel and diesel pricing
4. accident
5. impact to environment
6. increase in cost of material

since we already know the possible risk that will affect the work, than only we can plan on how to manage the risk. As we know, if we allow the possible risk to take place or happened, it will resulted into lost of profit or even jeopardize our reputation, what we need to do is to lay a proper plan of risk management to address these event. For example, we look in to the bad weather (rainy day), first we better look at the number of days throughout the month of previous years. Do some calculation, find out how may days is raining day of the month of the previous years. let say it is average of 10 days. This simply mean that we have a risk of non-workable day of 10 days of the same month which resulted in less productivity of the month. However we are tied by the contract that we need to complete the work at a determined date. Hence what is our choice that we have to manage this risk? May be one of the choice is increase the number of work force at the particular month. As now we have the solution to this risk, then the next step is to documented it in our risk management plan. When the event happened we already know what is the consequence and how to address it.

The easiest way out to address any risk in construction is we can always outsource this various trade with certain contract sum to others. In doing this we have the option to outsource the whole trade or only the works. This strategy will help us in a way, should there be any of the risk listed above happened, we already passed this unpredictable situation to others.Thus we can maintain our profit. However a proper agreement have to be prepared and terms and conditions must be clearly stated. One disadvantage of this type of risk management is we are putting our  reputation at a risk if the appointed team do not have a risk management plan.

STANDARD FORM OF CONTRACT

Contract document is a very important document that every personal cannot afford to missed out. Failure to understand the content of this document can lead to essential legal aspect of a contract which in the end will lead to major financial losses. In view of this consequence, it is good to first familiarised ourselves with the standard form of contract. The reason why this is important mainly due to that all contract will be prepared base on standard form of contract. Any extra requirement or specification normally will be added in as special condition of contract.

Base on my observation, most of the personal especially contractor, always neglect this aspect during the tendering process. This missing stage in tendering always resulted to contractor under price or under estimated the actual construction cost. If only this practice had not been skip, there will be lots of unnecessary losses to bare by parties involved. Under priced or under estimated always happened with the lump sum contract where bill of quantity is not provided in the tender document. Usually lump sum contract will only mention on the major works that need to be completed. for example, there is item describe as preliminaries and general, however it was not been elaborate further. For instance, there is no detail item spell out in the bill of quantity such as compliance to DOSH (Department of Occupational Safety and Health) act or environmental act or also compliance to local statutory and regulatory. In actual fact all of this had been spelled out in the standard form of contract.

As construction personal all of the standard form of contract contents and also special condition of contract just cannot been separate from the tendering process. For our further reference please refer to our respective nation or department that we deal with for the standard form of contract. The standard form of contract link that I include here might be useful to us.

STANDARD FORM OF CONTRACT.

JKR SARAWAK STANDARD FORM OF CONTRACT.

MALAYSIA JKR STANDARD FORM OF CONTRACT 203A(REV.2007)

MALAYSIA JKR STANDARD FORM OF CONTRACT FORNOMINATED SUPPLIER 203P

MALAYSIA PAM STANDARD FORM OF CONTRACT 2006(WITH BQ)

ROAD CONSTRUCTION SCOPE OF WORKS

Road construction is a Simple construction works compare to building work. This is mainly due to the reasons that in road construction there is not so many component of works that need to be done.

The major component of the Roadworks are only as listed below.

1. Survey and setting Out.
2. Site clearing
3. Earthwork.
4. Preparation of the Sub-grade.
5. Sub-base
5. Road-Base
6. Laying of Binder course
7. Laying of Wearing course
8. Road marking.
9. Drainage works
10. Road furniture( Signage/Guardrail & etc.)
11. Road marking
12. Bridge (if required under contract)
13.Traffic Lights (if required under contract).

However for building works, there is lots of components that need to be done in order to complete a building. The major component works are as follows;

1. Survey and setting out
2.Earthwork
3.Piling works.
4.Foundation works.
5. Stump
6. Beam
7. Slab
8.Slab
9.Wall
10.Staircase
11. Roof truss
12. Roofing
13. Internal cold water system
14. External water reticulation
15. Sewerage system
16. Internal electrical wiring System
17. External electrical wiring System.
18. Ventilation system
19. Finishing work ( Painting & Tiling )
20. Fencing & gate.
21. Door and windows.
22. Landscaping.
23. ect....

Building work consists of many trades compare to roadwork. For more detail list for the roadworks, please navigate here. This Roadworks scope of work list can be download for free.

Setting Out of Column Vertical Alignment

Column Vertical Alignment is very important in order to construct a straight vertical building. Now a days, setting out of the vertical alignment had been made easy with the advance technology such as leaser beam device. However in the event that the device that you are using is found faulty, do you know how to continue doing your work without the aid of that technology? In order for you to construct a true vertical column, the first thing that you need to get it right is the formwork itself

In view of this kind of situation, it is always good that we know the primitive way of doing it. All that you need are;
1. Measuring tape,
2. string,
3. timber and
4. Plumbob or heavy material that can pull the string straight (downward)

This primitive way does not even require any usage of Spirit Level.

All you need to do is assemble those. The picture below is how you need to assemble all that basic equipment as mention above. As mention earlier, to get a straight vertical column, first you need your formwork to set correctly. Hence from the picture shown, you can always replace the reinforce concrete column with your fabricated formwork. Once you get your vertical alignment correct, you can secure your formwork from moving. The same goes if you are installing timber type column.

How do you know that your column is vertically straight? What you need to know is the measurement of X1 is the same measurement for X2 and measurement for Y1 having the same measurement value as Y2.

Basic reinforce concrete beam formwork component.

Reinforce concrete structure when constructed using conventional method is as easy as industrial building system. The basic is always about Setting out, formwork, concreting work, bar bending work and installation of each of these component. All it takes is practice and practice until perfect. Below is picture of basic formwork component. All component are built with timber.

PICTURE 1: FALSEWORK

PICTURE 2: FORMWORK

PICTURE 3: PARTIALY COMPLETE FORMWORK INSTALLATION.

PICTURE 4: COMPLETE BASIC FORMWORK INSTALLATION

Guideline For Project Quality Plan

Project Quality plan is an essential document that any contractor or consultant must have. It is the life line of a project that will ensure the end product that is going to be delivered to client meet all the requirement and specifications. Some how, most of contractor does not have any idea on how to come out with this Project Quality Plan. Below is the the guideline on what shall be include in the Project Quality Plan. In other words, Project Quality Plan contents.

1. INTRODUCTION.

    1.1 Contract Particulars
    1.2 Project Description
    1.3 Site Plan
    1.4 Master Work Program

2.0 PROJECT MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATION
    2.1 Project Team
          2.1.1 Project Team Organization Chart
          2.1.2 Roles and Responsibilities
    2.2 Quality Assurance and Quality Control Team (QA/QC)
          2.2.1 QA/QC Team Organization Chart
          2.2.2 Roles and Responsibilities
    2.3 Manpower And Machineries on Site
          2.3.1 List of Manpower
          2.3.2 List of Machineries

3.0 DOCUMENT AND DATA CONTROL
      3.1 Project Files
      3.2 Incoming Project Files
      3.3 Outgoing Project Files
      3.4 Distribution / Control of Drawings

4.0 QA/QC ON CONSTRUCTION PROCEDURES
      4.1 Method Statement
      4.2 Laboratory Testing
      4.3 Submission and Approval of Materials
      4.4 Handling, Storage And Delivery
      4.5 Machinery And Equipment Controls
      4.6 Inspection And Test
      4.7 Non-Conforming Works And Actions To Be Taken

5.0 QA/QC IMPLEMENTATION PLAN
      5.1 Standard Forms and Checklist
      5.2 QA/QC Monthly Report
      5.3 Inspection And Test Plan
      5.4 QA/QC Records
      5.5 QA/QC Audits.