Jul 02 2008
Ineffective Time Management Sinks Projects
A rather startling report from the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) in London claims "a high proportion of complex construction projects are likely to be finished more than six months late due to poor time control."
Actually that isn’t really so startling since beyond managing people time is probably the second hardest thing to manage. And if you are going to try to manage other people’s time everything gets even more dicey.
Interestingly the report largely blames the lack of adoption of time-management technology as the reason for the delays. Some of the findings included:
- More than half the respondents cited knowledge of a master schedule being used but no short term planning was going on;
- Schedules were typically bar charts with no linked sequencing;
- Slippage in the schedules and imposed changes weren’t managed against the delay on project completion.
Less complex projects like low-rise offices, commercial, housing and schools had greater chances of being completed on time with just rudimentary time management technologies. But hospitals, clinics, prisons, railway and high rise projects suffered the greatest delays. Some observations by respondents to the survey included:
- Design teams were rarely consulted by the contractor regarding time management;
- The type of contract or procurement method has no real effect on the occurrence of delays;
- The contractor is mostly held accountable for the delays;
- Records of resources used and work performed are inadequate to effectively control times required to complete items; and
- Delays are kept quiet until its too late to recover (my reading and interpretation).
You can get the entire report here.
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