Thursday, December 11, 2014

Construction Cost Estimation.

Construction cost estimate is not only about cost of the construction materials, wages machineries, construction period and profit margin. There are some more factor that need to be consider and inserted. Some of the items which was spell out inside the preliminaries and generally of the bill of quantities in the tender document should not be taken lightly.

construction cost estimation software
Part of the item that was usually inserted in by quantity surveyor are, insurances, Government Levy, As-built drawings, quality assurance and quality control work. Very often that I came across tenderer that price those item that is not reasonable, especially as-built drawings and quality assurance and quality control works. It was price well below the the actual or market rate. Building As-built drawings for instant, very often that it being price at a range of  5,000-10,000 (currency). Just imagine, for a complete and functional building, there are five (5) major components to make it fully function. The five major components are Civil works, Structural works, Architectural works, electrical works and mechanical works. With these five major works, means contractor need to produce five different set of as-built drawings. How much will each of this As-Built drawing will cost contractor in order for them to produce sets of proper As-built drawings ????. With the pricing range from 5,000 to 10,000, is it possible???



That is only part of the construction cost estimate which need to be consider. How about the environment monitoring, charges by council or authority, occupation safety and health, third party liability and may more?
Hence construction cost estimate shall be priced accordingly to avoid any cash flow difficulties once your are awarded with a project. 

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Construction work and weather

SAFETY AND HEALTH FOR ENGINEERS
Construction site is a place where most of the works are performed at an open space or out-door. When we mentioned open space or out -door, all of the construction personnel that involved in construction activities are subject to weather condition. As every construction personnel know, when working out-door, each and every one of us will always want a good weather, especially moderate temperature on the day. In other words that day it is not a sunny day neither do it rainy day.




Regardless the weather condition, each of the situation having its own hazard towards health.
Below are some of the situation, Hazard and suggestion on how to manage the situation.

Weather Condition            Hazard                                         Management   
Raining                             Flu, Fever, Headache                   Do not work in rain.

Drizzling                              Flu, Fever,Slippery,                        Provide sheds ( if applicable) or/and 
                                         Fall from high place                      Avoid working at high location or/and
                                                                                            provide suitable PPE or
                                                                                            Do not work if it is drizzling

Strong Wind / Storm        Falling object,                               Do not carry out any activities below the 
                                                                                          group that working at higher location.

                                       Collapsed of Scaffolding               Evacuate or do not stay on scaffolding                                                                                                            platform during strong wind/storm.

Hot Weather                   Fainted and fall from high place          Worker rotation system,
                                     Heat stroke/Heat stress                     Provide Shades ( if applicable),
                                                                                             Ensure or provide drinks for workers
                                                                                             Provide and ensure the usage of suitable PPE
                                

Thursday, October 9, 2014

WORK PROGRAM AND THE S CURVE

Every construction project will need a well documented WORK PROGRAM or Work schedule. It is as a guide for the construction players on When and how can they achieve the target Completion date. For Planners they are well verse with Work Program. There is lots of computer aided program that can be utilised to enable them to come out with a professional look of a work program. Some of the computer aided program are, Microsoft Project, Primavera, Esteem and may more. The most common are Primavera and Microsoft Project. For a small scale project, work program even can be produce by using Microsoft excel or Office.org.

Most of the work program software are designed in such a way that it can also produce the "S-CURVE"."S-Curve" is a graphical presentation which showing informations such as "Schedule S-Curve", "Actual S-Curve", dates, Percentage of work and may more. Normally this is a method that commonly used to show the overall progress of a project. On the S-Curve graph, we will see what is the value (either in terms of dollar and cents or percentage) of previous work achieve, target value, and progress on the month of reporting.

S-Curve and Work program are both related. Changes to Work Program might affect the S-Curve. S-Curve in actual fact is derive from the work program it self. Without work program, people can still produce S-Curve but the question is, is it tally with what we planned to do?

To those who are new on the planning work, Work Program, once it being amended, it might affecting informations which you want to show on your S-curve.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Usage of Request for information

What is Request for Information (RFI) in construction work? In construction works Request for information is a method that normally being applied at construction site to obtained certain information with regards to works issues. It is ranging from the construction drawings, site condition and may others site matters. Site Manager, Site supervisor, site engineer or any site technical assistant are among the common personnel that have been using the "Request For Information (RFI)" method or form as a way of communication to officially obtained any information which will affecting the construction works.

                                                              

This RFI is commonly being issued out by contractor to the consultant or client site representative once there is any doubts arise from unclear instruction, specifications, drawings or plans or even the locality of the proposed structure. When contractor write and issue out a  "Request for information", in actual fact, they already put it on record that they are having an construction related issue which might hindered them from starting the construction for certain work or structure. As such it is a proof that they already highlighting something which might cause delay in construction progress, extra  construction cost, safety issue, site conditions or it might be only a request to confirm the validity of a verbal instruction, construction drawings or plans that had given to them unofficially. 

                                                             

Client site representative shall not take the "request for information" lightly since it having its legal value. In some cases, client site representative might not be in the position to provide such information to the contractor site personnel. If such situation occurred, with the issuance of "request for information" by contractor site representative, they then can convey or redirect the matter to their respective department or person in-charge to get the valid response or answer.

In construction, the line of communication when using the "Request for information" is between contractor site personnel and client site representative. By looking to those two parties we can say that the usage of "Request for information" Form is mostly at construction site level. 

If we notice in the above paragraph, the words "mostly" was used, this is merely because "Request for Information" also sometimes being used between headquarters and site as an internal communication in the same organisation. However the usage of "Request for information is not limited only to those application but it can be customised to suit the needs of an organisation.

Friday, July 25, 2014

Construction project stages

Construction is not about physically constructing a structure only but lot of other things involve. Construction in-whole are involving a few stages. Those stages start with setting goal by the owner (consultant/contractor's client) then followed by designing stage. Once the designers completed their design, they must first get approval from the client prior to the call for tender. Designer have to get their design as closed as they can as what had been describe by their client. This is important as to minimised any interruption during construction period due to design change. It is also important for the client in order not to burst their allocated budget for the whole project.

Upon approval of their design then consultants can proceed with the tender stage. This can be done via open tender such as through media advertisement. However some might one to call for invited tender. Invited tender is a bidding process where consultant will look for list of trusted, well reputable and competent contractor to submit their tender price for the purposed construction work.

After submission tender price, together with the client consultant, have to evaluate and come to a conclusion to whom must they award the contract. Another important part of this process is to counter check if client budget is enough. If the price they get burst their budget, the client might want to reduce the scope of work or call for another round of tender. Usually this is termed as re-tender process.

                                                    

Next before the construction can really start, upon deciding who is the contractor that can do the construction work, client will send an official "Letter of Intent" or most of the time, Client will  issue "Letter of Acceptance" or "Letter of Award". Once the official letter was sent out to the winner of the tender, consultant then need to prepare the contract document for both parties to sign.

Right after the signing process, by procedure wise, only then the awarded contractor can proceed with their physical construction work. While dealing with the construction of the structure, it is vital for every parties to keep their record of everything or important event as accurate, complete and safe as they can. This is because  those entire documents might have legal value in it. Among the records are letter of Award, Construction site diary, construction test and inspection approval, design change record, instruction from the client, records of construction meetings (site meeting, technical meeting and others important meeting or discussion) and may more.

Another important document that have to be kept properly and can be access by all parties involve is the "Master Work Program". This will show, when contractor going to start a certain work and when will they finished. Other than that, by having this master work program, client, consultant and contractor can monitor their construction health. Construction health is whether the construction work is ahead of schedule, on time or delayed. If the progress of the construction work shows delay, this is where all parties need to know why, and how to speed-up the progress or client might need to revised the construction completion date by granting Extension of Time base on valid reason as mentioned in the contract to the contractor. However if the records shows that reasons behind the delay is due to contractor negligence, client can by virtue of the signed contract and by any applicable law, penalised the contractor. Commonly happened is contractor being slap with the "Liquidated and Ascertained Damages (L&AD)" as allow in the contract.

                                                             

Upon completion of all of the construction scope of work and if the client satisfied with the end product, Client then will issue a letter of completion to contractor. This letter normally termed as "Certificate of Practical completion (CPC)". As mentioned earlier, "construction in whole involving a few stages", then bare in-mind, the issuance of CPC does not meant that the whole construction is over. Upon issuance of the CPC, another stage that will follow is the "post-construction" stage. This is a stage where all constructed structure being put into real test. The in-operation of the structure and all other components reassemble a complete structure will reveal all defects to the structure have. Defects in construction simply mean works that is done but does not functioning well. When this happened, client together with their consultant need to identify if is a defect due to contractor works or not. If it the answer is "yes", then client can request the contractor to rectify the defects as long as the defect occurred within the defect liability period. Inspection on the defect must be performed in the present of client, consultant and contractor and list of defects must be served officially to the contractor.

When the defect liability period is over, client has to close the construction account which normally termed as "closing of project account". In this stage client will released whatever money due to their contractor and consultants or recouped back whatever amount due to them from the contractor or consultants.

The next and final stage of the whole construction project is the post mortem by client them self. By performing this stage, client can evaluate, in overall, the cost, the construction period, functionality of the project and whether or not the project achieved their earlier goal. The result of the post-mortem will provide a better understanding and can be incorporated into the new project that they wish or planned to do.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Construction and global warming

Construction is one of the industries that contribute to global warming. Why is so? . Let we take a look into what is global warming.

Global warming in actual fact is due to green house effect. Green house effect happened because there increased in greenhouse gases(GHG) concentration in our atmosphere. Some of the green house gases are Carbon dioxide (CO2), Nitrous oxide or Nitrogen dioxide (NO2), Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), Ozone(O3), Methane(CH4) and other harmful gases which have a capability to trap heat from being radiated out from our atmosphere. Some of this green house gases have the ability to exist in our atmosphere more that 100 years.

So how does our construction industries become one of the contributor to this global issue? Before we answer this question, it is best to know activities that produce these greenhouse gases(GHG). CO2 usually being produce as one of the end product from the burning of fossil fuel, where as CFC or to be more accurate Tetrachloroethene is widely used as dry cleaning agent. May be some of the cleaning agent that we used contained CFC and we applied it in our construction method.

Another cause for the increase of CO2 in our atmosphere is deforestation. As we know,  plant need CO2 to enable them to generate their food. Hence by reducing the number of plants through deforestation activities will reduce the process of carbon sink. Construction industries especially the development of area for habitation involved land clearing(Deforestation) in a big scale.

Know, how do we relate this global warming issue with our construction industries? First what are some of the activities that contribute to the GHG? As mention earlier, Burning of fossil fuels and deforestation playing a significant role in increasing the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere. Years ago,  before laws and regulation was implemented due to the alarming issue of this global warming, Construction industries tend to cleared their debris by method of open burning. It might be the cheapest solution to cleared up all the debris compare to utilised the service from any waste treatment agency which having expertise in dealing with the controlled burning technology. However method of uncontrolled open burning can cause even more CO2 being released into our atmosphere. Therefore in construction industries this method must not being used as a way of debris disposal. Further to this, the other impact to the owner of the construction project is being at risk of being penalised for the breach of laws and regulation.


Related act.




Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Construction project manager roles and responsibility

Construction work, regardless any type of construction, a contractor will always need a competent Project manager. A person  that had been engaged to become a project manager must be able to handle these scope of work.

  1. Dealing with, client, consultants, local authority, supplier, sub contractor and local residence.
  2. Preparing a master work program
  3. keep and maintained all of important activities through the project.
  4. Attend any meetings that required his input. eg. Site meeting, Claim meeting, coordination meeting.
  5. Monitoring the overall progress to ensure timely completion of a project.
  6. Prepare weekly and monthly report.
  7. Monitoring and ensure that the construction work meet all the Quality requirement.
  8. Ensure that the end product is as per construction drawing.
  9. Dealt with any design change.
  10. Ensure that accommodation, transport and site office for client and consultant is always well equipped and maintained
  11. Assessing the value of the work done and submit the progress claim.
  12. Preparing application of Extension of time if any is required.
  13. Dealt with any matter arise with regards to the construction work.
  14. Dealt with any requirement and  documentation for the purpose of closing the project upon completion. 

In the event that there is any dispute, A Project Manager need to know what is in the contract, what can and what are allowed. Some of the construction work ended up in arbitration or in court, then the knowledge of contract act and tort law might be helpful.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

CONSTRUCTION METHOD STATEMENT FOR BRICKWALL

Construction of brickwall seems to be an easy component of construction work. However as usual any construction work shall come with their construction method statement. Below is a general method statement for construction of brickwall.

METHOD STATEMENT FOR CONSTRUCTION OF BRICKWALL.

Construction material.
Red clay brick, Exmet, Sand, Ordinary Portland Cement(OPC), Clean Water

Scalfolding, Brick cutter, Trowel, spirit level, Guiding tread, Plumbob, Hammer, Hand drill and etc.

Safety Equipment.
Personal Protective Equipment, Safety Tape, Rubbish Chute, Safety Baricade, Safety Railing any practical safety equipment for the purpose of the construction of brickwall.

Construction Procedure.
1. Obtain approval for construction material.
2. Upon approval, Setting out of the wall location shall be done, inspect and approved prior to construction work.
3. Safety and health shall be submitted and approved by Superintending Officer(S.O) or his representative(S.O.R).
4. Submit request for start work to S.O, once steps above already complied.

Construction work.
1. Ensure that the working environment is safe and bricklayer is wearing PPE.
2. make sure that the guiding tread or line is visible.
3. lay a layer of damp proof sheet at the bottom of the first layer of the brick.
4. On top of the damp proof sheet spread a layer of mortar. The mortar shall be mix by hand or mixer and the composition is according to requirement specified in the construction drawing or contract specification.
5. Red brick then shall be lay according to the construction drawing position. 
6. Exmet reinforcement shall be introduce after forth course of the brick. If required a dowel bar shall be install to strengthen the ties between column and the brickwall.
7. At any time during the work, all debris shall be clean especially the excess mortar to avoid it from harden on the floor surface.
8. Upon completion of the brickwall, leave it to dry and bonded before proceed with the plastering work.
9. Upon completion a request for inspection shall be submitted to S.O or S.O.R for acceptance of the work.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Red clay masonry works

Building work consist of numbers of major work component. Four(4)  major components of building work are Structure work, Architectural Work, Mechanical Work and Electrical Work.

In this article we will discuss on building the building wall which is another small component of work which fall under Architectural work. Building Wall can be describe as External wall and Internal wall. Both of this wall can be build using various building material. Among the material used is Red clay brick. Building wall that was constructed with Red Clay brick, commonly known as common brick is a type of wall that being design not to carry any loading apart of its own weight.

What is common brick? Definition of common brick is " acceptable burned clay brick for the purpose of general usage of brickwork with no special claim for attractive value". Walls built with common brick required rendering or plastering for a fine finishing prior to any painting work or introducing of wall paper. Wall that required tiling as it finish surface usually required plastering to ensure that the built wall have a flushing surface in order to properly fixed the tiles.

*Standard size for masonry or Red clay Brick according to BS: 3921: 1985 or MS 7.6 : 1972 are as follows;
Length = 215 + 3 mm
Width  = 102.5 + 1.875 mm
Height = 65 + 1.875 mm
(* quoted from http://www.claybricks.com/more_info/brick-specifications.html )



In building a brick wall for any building we often heard of this terminology.
1. Half brick thick wall
2. One brick thick wall
3. One and a half brick thick wall.

All of those terminology is base on the measurement or the length of a standard brick. 
- Half brick thick wall = 1/2 x length of the brick,
- One brick thick wall = 1 x length of brick 
- One and a half brick thick wall = 1 length + 1/2 x brick length. 

Apart form the thickness of the wall another important part of the brick wall construction is the bond type between the brick. This bonding is to provide integrity between each of single piece of Red clay brick. Some of the type of bond are;

1. Stretcher Bond.

2. English bond

The application of those type of bond can be seen base on the wall thickness requirement. 

Half brick thick wall : stretcher bond



One brick thick wall : English bond



One and half brick thick wall : English bond and Stretcher bond.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Setting out for building wall construction.

Building wall construction required bricklayer to do a simple setting Out. How to do this setting out?
Below are steps that needed.

1. Study the Architectural construction drawing.



2. Do the measurement as specified on the drawing and mark every single point  (Both Upper and Lower Point).



3. On the lower ground Mark Continuous line from one end (earlier mark done at step 2) of the proposed wall to the other end of Proposed wall (earlier mark done at step 2).

4. By using Plumbob, Hang two (2) vertical tread for each end of the proposed wall. Make sure the tip of plumbob hang straight on top of the lower mark which is on the ground floor or lower floor where the proposed wall going to be build.

5. Tie a horizontal tread on both vertical tread. make sure that this horizontal tread is moveable and not too loose until it cannot stay on position when it is moved up and down to a new desire possition along the vertical tread.


4. Start lay your wall when all of this guide line/tread is fixed and practically working.

The tread is useful to ensure that the wall is build with a vertically Straight and horizontally straight unless the wall is designed to certain pattern.

When doing Setting out for a wall you will need this basic hand tool and consumable Material
a) Hammer 

b) Tread

c) Measuring Tape

4) Maker ( Pencil / Pen )
5) Nail

6) Chalk liner

 7) Plumbob.

Monday, June 9, 2014

Safety and Health Costing in Construction

Safety and health is an important field by itself. The term safety and health do not only applied for certain industry but in everyday task that we undertook. Safety and health issue need and have to be emphasised even if we are at home.

May be we do come across in our construction contract especially in our bill of quantity there is no specific item that mentioned on safety and health. However sometimes it is clearly spell  out in our general condition of contract or standard condition of contract that we need to provide safety and health precaution or equipment for the whole duration of the contract. Hence we are also required to fulfilled this term and condition of the contract once we signed and agreed to undertake the project. Even though it is not spell out in the bill of quantity we still need to allow some cost to cover this area.

Another clause that will always relate back to this safety and health issue is, we are required to adhere to all statutory and regulatory requirement and also local authority requirement. This statement seems to be very general but it might have the same impact as the item listed under our bill of quantity and contract drawing. Let say local authority required us to do protective measure to public safety and health when we are working within their jurisdiction, hence we need to comply to that requirement. However this does not appear as an item inside the bill of quantity. Hence, how are we going to cope with this cost?.What we can do is either to insert it elsewhere inside any item inside the bill of quantity or sometime there is always an item that is spell out as ..." Others:........." which I believe this can be use to insert the cost for Safety and Health.

Let we take a glimpse of how much could this safety and health could cost us. For example we had been awarded a construction project of worth of $30 Million ( Thirty million) with the construction duration of 12 months. According to our Board of construction Industry, all project that cost $20 million and above, a Safety and Health Officer must be appointed. Therefore we need to fulfil this requirement. Hence part of the cost in safety and health is the Safety and health Officer salary. By ordinary man terms, Salary is inclusive of any benefit that must be provided for an employee.In total how much will be the salary. let assume that salary for a Safety and health officer is $7000 per month inclusive of all benefit that he is entitle for under the law. Hence in total, salary alone will cost $84,000.00. how about other safety equipment that we need to provide. The most basic is Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). How about others equipments or signages that we need to install or erect throughout the construction period? In the end, the safety and health will cost us more than $84,000.00.

Why do we need to allow the safety and health cost inside our construction cost? By doing so our construction cost that we going to offer will not going to be competitive. Lets ask back to ourselves. If  I do not allow any cost for this and incident or accident at work place happened, where will I find the money to cover the damages cost? The second question is how about, if the accident happened to myself due to my own negligence for taking lightly the issue of safety and health, will i be able to continue with my work? let we keep the answer closed to out heart. Safety and health is not about making money but it is about our very own daily survivor. Therefore be careful of this safety and health at work place issue. It can happen to any of us.

If it still occurred at our construction site and we already take all necessary action that deem practical and fit to our working environment, than we have to accept is as our fate. But the rules is always about who's fault is it?. Do not let the expert telling us it is our fault and we are liable for this negligence.

Each country or state have their own set of rules that we need to adhere with. Hence for our own good, comply to it.

The photo is not belong to Construction2u.blogspot.com. It can be find and view at from http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/f10/fatal-work-accidents-25565


Thursday, May 29, 2014

Construction and OpenOfice Free software.

Today reality, everyone are keen to keep the cost as minimum as it can be. The idea by doing so is, increasing profit from their operation. What does this mean to us as person involve in construction? It simply meant that if I can reduce my cost in delivering my contract successfully, I will be competitive enough to secure more project. As a result, there will be increase in Income. However in construction it is not only about the efficiency in physical construction but also the indirect supporting tools that we use.

Why OpenOffice? OpenOffice is an computer software which functioning as Microsoft office product. It have different type of software such as OpenOffice Calc which do the similar work like excel, OpenOffice writer can serve the purpose of the MS word and OpenOffice impress can do the same presentation like MS Powerpoint.

What so special about Openoffice? Its free to download and use. With this condition, we don't have to spend much money to purchase the software.




Wait. However there is some limitation in using this OpenOffice. You might facing problem with those who does not use OpenOffice especially if you want to share or distribute digital soft-copy of your works. before you share you works save the file as excel file to enable those that are using MS excel be able to open the file and edit it if necessary.

Best of all to those construction that want to minimized the cost on the the computer aided software. It might not be significant. but the bottom line is cost saving.(if possible)

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Construction manager delegation of power

cConstruction manager or project manager is an important element for any construction field. Thus, it is important for them to be available at all time during construction period. However in real life, everybody need sometime to rest or leave for what ever reason. In view of this situation, it is always a good practice to perform "power delegation" procedure. This is a procedure to authorised a competent personnel to take over the manager duty when ever he or she will be on leave for a substantial period of time such as one week. Most of the construction company only make known the delegation of power to the person affected but in most cases they fail to notify other organisation on the issue. This scenario seems to be only a minor matter any it would not affect the construction work but it do affect the works if drastic or urgent decision is required in which the decision only can be make by authorised personnel. Hence any delegation of power shall be make official and all organisation that involved shall be officially inform.

The content of the delegation of power shall clearly stated the name of the person that will take over the responsibility, his scope of work and his limit of authority. If required may be the period he or she be in power also shall be stated.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Critical Path Calculation

How to determine “Critical Path” in a project ?
To determine “critical Path” in a project  required:-

  • Knowledge in the sequence of every task until completion of the project.
  • “Start” and “ Finish” date need to be pre-determine base on current available resources or planned resources for the project.
  • Calculation on the Numbers of float days for individual task and also Numbers of Total float days for each of single path or series of task which formed a path.



Calculation on Individual Float and Total float need us to do the following  steps :-

  • Forward Pass Method ( Begin from the Start date to completion date of a project ).
  • Backward Pass Method ( Begin with the completion date to Start date).
  • Individual Float Calculation required the Information on the Early finish date and Late finish date Which can be obtain from the step 1 and Step 2.
  • Total float required us to add all of the individual float that resemble series of task to form a Path.



Individual Float calculation for a Task.



Formula : Individual Float = Late finish date – Early finish date

Example 1.
Individual Float = 28.04.2014 – 28.03.2014
=   30 days  



Example  2.
Individual Float = 28.03.2014 – 28.03.2014
=     0 days



Total Float calculation for a Path.

Formula : Total Float = Activity 1+Activity2+Activity3+Activity4


Path1 Total Float   = Individual Activity 1 + Individual Activity 2 + Individual Activity 3 +                                     Individual Activity 5
                                 = 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 0 days

Path 2 Total Float  = Individual Activity 1 + Individual Activity 4 + Individual Activity 5
                                 = 0 + (27.04.2014 – 18.04.2014) + 0
                                 = 0 + 9 days + 0 days = 9 days float


Critical path is the path that consist of activities with “0 days” of float.

Normally critical path when show in a chart or work program it is colored in “RED”


Further reading reference:
Critical Path Methods in Construction Practice
Critical Path Method,
Critical Path