Abstracts – Browse Results
Click on the titles below to expand the information about each abstract.
Viewing 1 results ...
Gledson, B, Williams, D and Littlemore, M (2018) Construction Planning Efficiency and Delivery Time Performance: Analysing Failure in Task-Level 'Hit Rates'. In: Gorse, C and Neilson, C J (Eds.), Proceedings 34th Annual ARCOM Conference, 3-5 September 2018, Queen’s University, Belfast, UK. Association of Researchers in Construction Management, 627–636.
- Type: Conference Proceedings
- Keywords: Construction planning, Failure, Measurement, Planning efficiency, Predictability, Productivity.
- ISBN/ISSN: 978-0-9955463-2-5
- URL: http://www.arcom.ac.uk/-docs/proceedings/39d745e3843ceb51c740828c57e71876.pdf
- Abstract:
Within construction, project delivery is considered successful if scope, time, cost and quality outputs are attained, and any shortcomings in one or more of these representing a failure of sorts. Considering only one of these criteria – ‘time’ – it is noticeable how recent research efforts have focused on poor time predictability and performance at ‘industry-level’, with minimum focus being retained at ‘project-level’, although some exceptions are apparent. These include Lean Construction theorists arguing how the ‘planned percentage complete’ (PPC) of individual construction activities typically remains at only 50%, and Dawood (2010) who created a way of determining ‘planning efficiency’ identifying a ‘percentage reliability’ of circa 55%. It is therefore apparent that the enactment of ‘projects’, ‘project phases’ and their individual ‘work packages’ and ‘construction tasks’ remains unsatisfactory. The main aim of this work was to contribute to such efforts through an analysis of planning efficiency across several distinct ‘substructure’, ‘superstructure’, and ‘finishes’ project phases. A further sub-aim of this work was also to review a common construction ‘maxim’ which holds that major contractors are able to perform satisfactorily during the ‘substructure’ and ‘superstructure’ phases, but not the ‘finishes’ phase of a project. Performance data were provided by a major UK construction organisation from several recently completed projects. This allowed quantitative analysis to be employed that measured planning and delivery efficiency using a previous method established by Dawood (2010). Findings show how planning and delivery efficiency is worse than previously recorded with an average of only 38% of project activities starting on and finishing on time. Secondary findings show that the highest percentage of activities that started late and finished late in this sample, was within the ‘superstructure’, and not the ‘finishes’ project phase. Several of the study’s results can help inform construction productivity efforts.