Construction Technology : Industrial Building System ( IBS)

What is Industrial Building System ( IBS )? IBS is not a new technology in the construction industry. It has been there for years but we just not realised that some of the construction material that we are using are infact IBS.

There are advantage of building with IBS. Below are some of advantage that our construction industries especially contractors need to know.

1. Reduce construction Period.
2. The quality of product are properly monitor since the product of IBS are fabricate or manufactured in the factory.
3. Reduce wastage of construction material..
4. Increase the cleanliness of site.
5. In a long run , it help contractor to reduce cost of construction

The most valuable point is " Time = Value for Money "

Some of the IBS product are Ready fabricate Wall or partition Panel, Steel or Timber roof truss, Building Facade, Door and Window Frame, Column, Slab and beam. Bridge Girder also part of it.

In Some cases, where major structure building cannot being fabricate in factory due to transportation problem, the item under IBS that can be use is the Formwork. Formwork also called IBS if the formwork can be use over and over again and for more that one project. The type of formwork that we mentioned here are steel form work.

How to prevent project failure

How to Prevent Project Failure

Project failure is an important agenda that every construction personnel want to avoid. However only a few of those directly involve know how. Here are some of the very basic but most important ingredients on how to prevent the project failure.

 

1. Only hire the experienced key personnel.
   
2. Ready to invest in the relevant software or computer program that can help you to plan and monitor your project.
   
3. Never try to deliver your project with the sub-standard quality just for the sake of making profit.
   
4. Know your own specialise field.
   
5. Adhere strictly to your own policy and objective that you set in order to successfully deliver a project.
   
6. Tomorrow will come with its own difficulties, thus try as much as you can to deliver whatever you need to deliver today.
   
7. Make the construction as you hobby and not only because of money. Love it, enjoy it , surely you will make more than what you can think of.
   

 

COMMON TENDER ESTIMATION MISTAKE

Common Tender Estimation Mistake by Contractor.
Tender estimation is a very important area for a contractor in order to secure a contract. Their estimation must be very competitive to ensure that they will win in their bidding. However the common scenarios that repetitively happen among the tenderer are always as the following.

1. The cheaper the construction cost, the higher their chances to secure a contract.
2. Assumption always being done without visiting the actual site, thus they will not be able to provide a cost that is as accurate as needed to suite the site condition.
3. Most of the time the contractor always by pass the standard condition of contract and also the special condition of contract which normally being include inside the tender document. Thus, as the result, they will only estimate base on what is inside the bill of quantity and the tender drawing. Usually inside the bill of quantity, there is an item listed as "other necessary work that deem to be necessary to complete the work ". This is where the special condition of contract, standard condition of contract, standard specification and special specification requirement should not being assume.

There are cases that there are some work deem to be necessary to complete the work that being shown in the tender drawing but it was not specifically being spell out in the bill of quantity that had cause the awarded contractor fail to price the cost to the particular work. As the result during construction this contractor have raised their concern over this issue of the particular work by mentioning that it was not included in the contract as it has not being listed out inside the bill of quantity. After a thorough study of the contract document, it was found out that there is a clause in the special condition of contract mentioning that if there is any necessary work that deem to be necessary to complete the project and had being shown in the tender drawing, contractor should price it under the item "necessary work to complete the job". Because of this clause, the contractor have to do the work out of his own expenses which the cost cannot be claim from the client as the variation or addition work. Therefore it is very important for contractor to properly study the tender document and the drawing in order to give a competitive tender price that will not become a deadly trap to their construction work.
All the illustration and scenarios above are not the only common mistake done in preparing the cost estimation for a tender but there are many other such as fail to know the market price, calculation error or even for the sake to penetrate the market. Hence in preparing the tender pricing, contractors need to look into all area that will affect the construction work.
Contractors, Good luck and best wishes for you.

Are Your Project Managers Working Too Hard to Be Successful?

Are Your Project Managers Working Too Hard to Be Successful?: "

The latest Standish Group report shows more projects failing and fewer successful projects.

‘This year’s results show a marked decrease in project success rates, with 32% of all projects succeeding which are delivered on time, on budget, with required features and functions’ says Jim Johnson, chairman of The Standish Group, ‘44% were challenged which are late, over budget, and/or with less than the required features and functions and 24% failed which are cancelled prior to completion or delivered and never used.’

So what is going wrong out there? Why are your projects being challenged in this way? Are your project managers perhaps working too hard to be successful for you?

Read the rest at ProjectTimes.

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Construction Management for Contractor : Pre-tender Stage

 

 

 

Stage 1: Pretender / prebidding Planning or Management

Stage 1 will always taken place after contractor received notice of tender which usually being advertised through electronic medium or convention medium that is through news paper. Notice of tender also sometime being mailed to contractor by the parties who call for the tender. This type of tender usually call invited tender.

The duration taken for completion of this stage heavily depend on the following;

1. 
   
   Type of tender: Conventional, Design and build or invited tender.
2. 
   
   Size or value of project .(Value of project most of the time is confidential by the party who call for tender .In Malaysia scenario the value of project will determine the category of contractor that can participate in the tender.
3. 
   
   Amount of information that needs to be disclosing by the tenderers.

In normal practice, the duration of the tendering process for Design and Build tender is from four (4) weeks to 3 months and usually it being break into two (2) stages which are prequalification stage and tender stage. The information that needs to be submitted during the tendering stage is the background of the contractor such as

1. 
   
   financial background
2. 
   
   current project
3. 
   
   previous experience
4. 
   
   registration as required under the condition of prequalification
5. 
   
   Plant, machineries or equipment of the contractor
6. 
   
   Professional (qualified technical and administration) staff of the contractor.

After screening by the party who call for tender, the contractor who pass the requirement of the prequalification will be notify and they are required to submit a complete tender document. This process is call prebidding stage or tender stage. At this stage, contractor will start to engage the following professional;

1. 
   
   Design team to do the design for them.
   1. 
      
      Professional Architect
   2. 
      
      Professional Civil Engineer
   3. 
      
      Professional Structure Engineer
   4. 
      
      Professional Project Manager Consultant
   5. 
      
      Professional Mechanical Engineer
   6. 
      
      Professional Electrical Engineer and
   7. 
      
      Professional Quantity Surveyor

The design team then will come out with the tender drawing or plan that will be submitted together with the tender document. The role of the project manager is to come out with the proposed work program with the help of all parties to feed him the relevant data in order for him to develop an almost accurate work program which then resulted to the duration of construction period that is needed to accomplish to work.

Where as, for the Professional Quantity Surveyor will work on the builder cost inclusive of all preliminaries and generally item which then will be compiled to form a complete tender document.

As for Conventional tender contractor will only have to submit their pricing and background information. The background information is the same as the Design and Build prequalification stage.

Under the pretender planing or management, In general, it will involve the following stage;

1. 
   
   Decision to participate in tender
2. 
   
   Purchase of tender document
3. 
   
   Pre tender meeting
4. 
   
   Construction method
5. 
   
   Cost Estimate stage
6. 
   
   Pretender work program
7. 
   
   Decision on overall tender pricing to be submitted and
8. 
   
   Submission of the tender document.

 

All of the information provided above is a good practice in pretender planing or management. In actual of fact, the above mention stages and information heavily depend on the organisation it self. Different organisation have different approach on how their pretender planing or management going to be. Some of the stages might no be necessary for small scale project which intended for small scale contractor which the owner himself could be able to do all the stages. This mean that the above stages, especially the pre tender meeting is not required. Then this stage will not be applicable to them.

Top reason why a project fail

Reason Why a Project Fail

In everyday life there are a lot of changes that always take place. The change have become more and more significant when there is monetary value involve. This have been a big challenge to anybody and it always the case that wether we want to face it or run away from it. When oneself decide to do away with the changes and run away from the challenges, we will never going to improve or move forward but instead of being successful we are already doom before we go to the battle field. In Construction Industry the same principal is applicable.
In managing a construction project, client, consultant and contractor, all of them will never run away from facing the unique of the challenges. They always try to find a way to solve the issue. For the new comer in this industry, there is no project that is going to be the same with the other. Each of them will come with a unique problem due to the nature of this field, that is, we are dealing with human and nature which is unpredictable. Therefore we must be ready to face the challenge.
The worst nightmare for client, Consultant and Contractor and they always try to avoid is project failure. Before we go further into this topic, let us define what "Project Failure"is.
Under this scope of discussion, "Project", simply mean a construction work in whole and "Project Failure " mean construction that was done or completed or even being call off because of it does not meet the real target or purpose of it or due to the budget constrain either on the contractor side or client side.
From contractor prospective, project failure is a construction project that does not bring in positive income or profit but only losing more money and tarnish contractor reputation. The same idea goes with consultant. However for the owner or client or stakeholder, project failure means that the project which has been completed or not completed and handed over to them is a project that does not serve the correct purpose or functionality. It only becomes a waste of time and money.
With the simple definition of "project failure", now we are ready to go and dig deep inside what the root cause is of or the reason why a project fail.
The main root cause of this is failure to plan. What is the significant of planing with project failure? Project planing not just about doing the estimate budget and estimate of time required to complete a project, but it allow the owner of the project to see the following;

1. what is the purpose of the project,
   
2. The scope of work of the project,
   
3. What are the degree of cost that will involve,
   
4. What are the resources they need in order to make the project a successful project,
   
5. The duration needed to complete the whole project,
   
6. What are the rule and regulation they have to fulfil,
   
7. How they can reduce the project cost without jeopardise the quality of work, and
   
8. What are the risk they have to take and how to mitigate it and last but not least
   
9. What is the return they will get if they invest in this project?
   

Even with all the listed above there is still risk that nobody can predict before the event take place. The risk that I mentioned here is risk of uncertainty that ranging from global economic to the labour of workforce issue.

TOP VITAL STEP IN SUCCESSFUL CONSTRUCTION (PART 3): WORK PORGRAM

Top Vital Step in Successful Construction (Part 3): Work Program

As discussed in part 2, the important item that must never being neglected is Work Program. For this discussion, we will go through a sample of a work program as shown below.

 

The above sample was developed by the aid of Microsoft Project 2002 software.

The work Program above is consisting of numbers of column.

The first column is the "I" column that represent the information of the following column such as the work listed in the following column have not been started even though it supposed had been start or it also collect the status of the work in the following column wether the work is behind , on time or ahead schedule.

The Second column: Task – The column where all the job or work that required to complete a project successfully being listed. All of the listed item in this column can be organise in phases. For example; One of the main Work that need to be done is building work. Under the main work there are still another few more item that need to be completed such as Piling work, beam work, slab work, column work, roof beam work, roofing work, brickwork and many other that required in order to construct a fully functional building.

The Third Column: Duration – The column where the period or number of day/months/year that is needed to completed one task. Each task might have same number of days/months/years/ or it could also be different which highly depend on the resources that are allocated for the task. However the sample above does not show the resources allocated for each task.

The Fourth column : Start –
In this column we can insert as when we want a task to start which is to be more accurate the date of the task to start. This column also being auto calculate by Microsoft project it self if the task is depend on the other task that need to be completed first before the next task can start. For example; refer to item 3 and 4 under Column ID.

The Fifth Column: Finish – This column normally being govern by the duration of each task that we insert in the second column and the dependency of the task. Let choose that we want Microsoft project to calculate and insert the finish date of a task we only need to determine and key in the duration that we need to complete the task. The next data required by Microsoft project before it can calculate the targeted date to finish a task is weather the task is independent or dependent. For example item 3 under ID column, The duration is 6 days, the start date is on 1/9/2009, therefore the finish date calculate by Microsoft project will be on 7/9/2009.

The sixth Column: % complete – In this column we will enter the percentage of a task complete when we update the status a task. If a task is already completed, than in this column we can enter the number to 100. The value of this column must be 0 – 100. 0 indicate the tasks have not yet start and 100 indicate the task already completed. However for the work Program above all value under this column is "0" due to the project have not started and the work program above is just an estimate for discussion purpose.

The next area in the work program is all the bar chart. This bar is as a result of the information that we enter in the first to the Sixth column. This is called Gantt chart. This Gantt chart will show how the dependencies between tasks are, when it starts and finish and also the important portion are the bar which are red in colour. The bars that colour red are all the critical path / task in this construction project. Delay in any of the task will resulted in the construction project not being able to be completed within the agree construction period if the is no drastic action taken to improved the output of the delay task. For example a critical task is delay, at the current situation the task only being carried out during day time, due to the result of the task being delay, the team can be push to work 24hours or resources for this task need to be increase in order to catch up with the delay.

Project management Software

This is another good Project mangement Software that manager need know. This video clip will show you How to create master work program by the aid of this computer software. Check this video out and enjoy it.

TOP VITAL STEP IN SUCCESSFUL CONSTRUCTION ( PART 2 )

Top Vital Steps in Successful Construction(Part 2)

Thank you for following this article. Please read thoroughly this article for your own benefit.

In the Top Vital Step in Successful Construction (Part 1), I already elaborate in brief what are the vital steps that needed in order to successfully complete a construction project. One of the key steps that I did mentioned was the Work Program.

The first stage that a person needs to do is to come out with the master work program which will be the baseline for the monitoring purpose. Work Program, as a matter of fact, is part of the project management item which is a very important tool for project managers. It list and display almost all items that required in orderly manner as guidance for all head of construction personnel to do their work. In a work program one can find out easily the information as listed below.

1. Required task to deliver a construction product,
   
2. When is the date of site possession or site handing over to contractor,
   
3. The start and the finish every task,
   
4. The duration that needed to complete a task,
   
5. The dependency of each and every task,
   
6. The cost of construction for every task,
   
7. Contractor resources that are planned to complete a work,
   
8. Critical task that must not being delay the date to start and finish,
   
9. The targeted date of completion and
   

However, out of the entire item listed above, it still up to the project manager to customise what is the information that he want to display in his work program. Nevertheless the developer of the work program still need to incorporate the entire item mentioned for the purpose of monitoring the status of the project.

The second stage of the work program is tracking stage. What is tracking stage? Tracking stage is a process that manager need to do to enable him to get the overall view of the project status. In other word, it is to insert in the percentage of the work completed task by task. The percentage will show how the project progress in actual. It will calculate the differences between the baseline or the schedule program and actual work done on site. With the information the project manager will know whether his project can be successfully completed on the same date as spell out in the formal contract. In general term of reporting project progress, the overall status of the project also reported either as "ahead of schedule" or "behind schedule" which also mean the project is delay.

Know that we already discuss the important of the work program; the next question is how are we going to come out with the work program? There are two ways that we can use to develop a work program. The first one is do it manually which mean developing the work program without the computer aided software and the next method is to utilised any available work program software that we familiar of. There are numbers of software being develop and lunch for this purpose. Among them are Microsoft Project and Primavera. With the available technology that we have now, it have tremendously reduce the difficulty to develop a good work program.

For all those involve in developing the work program, congratulation that you have read this article. Hopefully that it can help you out and look out for the next article which will be publish soon. Thank you.

http://www.safetyfirstaluis.blogspot.com: Occupational Safety & Health: Isu Keselamatan & Kesihatan Di Tapak Bina

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Project Management : Earned Value and Microsoft Project#links

There are many way of doing the management of a project. One of it is by using the software such as micsrosoft project.

Project Management Blog: Earned Value and Microsoft Project#links

Project Management

Project management is an area in any construction related field that cannot be neglected. To sucessfully completed a project, any construction organisation or firm need to have a competent team to work on this specific field. Without the knowledge in Project Management, a project will just fall into disaster.. which everyone in this field will definitely want to avoid if possible.

The project management is a work that is not on paper only, it can be a trap to oneself if it is going to be done for the sake of documentation wise. It is a very important essence in construction. There are many related article that can be read to know better in this Area of project management.

My Construction Site Photo

Site Clearing for New Road

Completed Road improvement

Completed Subbase

My Road Project still under Construction

TOP VITAL STEP IN SUCCESFULL CONSTRUCTION ( Part 1 )

VITAL STEPS IN SUCCESSFUL CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS (PART 1)

Why Contractors always being hunted whether can or cannot they successfully completed a construction project? There is one reason why they always being hunted by the issue.

First of all, regardless whether it new contractor or experienced contractor, the common mistake that they repeatedly do is failure to properly plan. The question is why? The number one issue is usually contractors are so obsessive to have as much job as they can. It is because in construction business, generally the more jobs the contractor has, the more income it mean to them. Hence, when such logical was to be taken for granted it often hidden other vital item from the contractor to make proper planning.

Let us elaborate more on the logical of the statement "More jobs the contractor have means more income to them". The statement is true in the sense that each and every project a contractor can secure, there had been estimation on how much the profit the will make. However estimation on the profit alone does not mean that a construction project will be successfully completed as stipulated in the contract agreement.

That is where Construction or Project Planning taken place.

Bellow are few steps that contractor need to be consider before they bid for a project.

1. The contractor current work Load,
   

1. Available cash flow or financial status,
   

1. Available plant, machinery and equipment,
   

1. Available competent staff,
   

1. Knowledge on site condition prior to participating in a particular tender.
   

All though, all the five (5) listed factor is merely at the finger tips of the contractor knowledge but it always being neglected when there are to obsessive to win a tender.

The next step in construction or project planning that becomes the heart of Construction is Work Program.

What is work program? In brief, a work program is a list of task or job that needs to be done in order to successfully complete a construction. In a work program, normally it will show the information as when to start and to finish. It also carried out the information of dependency between tasks to task. On the resources part it will show what and how many manpower, equipment, plant and machinery needed for a particular task to be successfully completed as required. With a work program, a contractor will be able to see how much the construction cost (for Labors, Equipments, Machinery and Plants) he has to pay for.

For all construction related contractor, Engineers, Architect and any construction personnel, the information above is merely a guide from my own experienced. It does not intend to mislead anyone but if it does, I do apologies.

Making money in construction, share freely with us what you know.

Tender Notice

HI,

Good Day..

All Contractor, If you want to check the tender notice under Jabatan Kerja Raya Negeri Sarawak, You can Click the link below.

http://www.jkr.sarawak.gov.my/

WHAT IS CONSTRUCTION ?

What is construction ? Construction is part of the great engine to mobilised our economic. It involved lot of area ranging from technical, financial, safety, material or even political and ect. The most Prominent profesional people that in this field are Engineers, Architects, Quantity Surveyor, Safety and health Officer, Accountant,Businessman, Town Planner or The Authority and even the Government. Infact everybody can involved in this field but be careful you need to know what your are doing...After all there is BIG MONEY AND FAST MONEY that will surely take place here. The Most important quality that a person needed here is INTERGRITY....

wanted to jump in this boat? be prepared for all posibilities.