Construction Practice and Management Report

This report provides a detailed analysis of the construction industry, covering its development, organizational structures, contractual practices, modern construction processes, and the impact of BIM, health and safety regulations, and collaboration. It also examines different types of construction companies, their relationships, and planning techniques for micro and macro projects.

Construction Practice and
Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
P1 Explain how the construction industry has developed and encompassed professionalism
within its structures.................................................................................................................1
P2 Demonstration on scope and linkage between head office and site office structure within a
construction organisation........................................................................................................2
P3 Identify the type of contractual work tendered by contractors..........................................4
P4 Identify the different types of construction companies in the market...............................5
P5 Explain the relationship between different construction organisations............................6
P6 Identify, with examples, modern construction processes and sequences used within today’s
industry, highlighting the way they respond to sustainability needs......................................6
P7 Explain contract planning techniques used within micro and macro projects..................6
P8 Identify where BIM impacts upon operations and construction companies.....................8
P9 Explain how health & safety has now become an integrated part of the construction
process....................................................................................................................................8
P10 Describe the government legislation which has benchmarked health & safety within
construction............................................................................................................................8
P11 Discuss the role of collaboration and communication in ensuring safe working practices. 8
M1 Analyse how the construction industry has developed overall in terms of company
structures, it’s employees and contracted work......................................................................8
M2 Analyse the catalyst which connects construction companies, including contracts and
tendering.................................................................................................................................8
M3 Analyse how construction has developed in terms of innovation, designs, and within
contracts for micro and macro projects and the interrelationship with BIM..........................8
M4 Demonstrate how the construction industry has benefited through changes in health safety
legislation...............................................................................................................................8
D1 Critically evaluate how construction companies have developed their structure and
business ethos.........................................................................................................................8
D2 Compare the main factors which differentiate between construction companies, contracts
and tendering..........................................................................................................................8

D3 Provide a detailed analysis of how the construction industry has evolved in terms of
innovative construction methods and contracts......................................................................8
D4 Evaluate the impact of health & safety legislation, how it has evolved the drivers for it,
and its advantages or weaknesses within construction...........................................................8
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................9
.......................................................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Construction management is considered as the most challenging as well as demanding
profession (Spence and Kultermann, 2016). Here, for completing a project successfully as per
perspective of clients, professionals require to get support of many civil engineers, surveyors,
interior designers, mechanical and electrical engineers and assistance of other construction
professionals. They would help in building a proper plan and design for constructing a building
in appropriate manner (Virdi, 2017). Here, roles and responsibilities of each construction
professionals is different from each other, where architect used to manage the design as well as
construction of particular project, while structural engineer helps in ensure that whether such a
project is structurally stable or not.
The present report is mainly focusing on concept of professionalism in construction
industry. It demonstrates the scope and linkage among site office structure and head office within
construction organisation. For this purpose, four main case scenario is taken where first part
reveals the requirement of a client who wants to build a new residential project at Kowloon East
Road in Honk Kong. While second part which is based on feasibility stage, here, different types
of construction companies and their relationship within tendering process are described.
Furthermore, under the third part, recommendation is given to client for using BIM Model i.e.
Building Information Modelling. This would explain key stages requires in given construction
project. At last scenario, concern of client towards health and safety issue is described, to analyse
how construction industry has developed collaborative strategies for health and safety also
described.
P1 Explain how the construction industry has developed and encompassed professionalism
within its structures
Construction refers to a diverse industry which includes a number of activities for
constructing a commercial or residential building. It includes activities range from mining,
manufacture and supply of products, quarrying and forestry for making an infrastructure, etc.
With development of professionalism in this sector, today, construction industry has given a lot
in improving the infrastructure of societies (Wood and et. al., 2016). Now, through support of
many professional engineers, architects, interior designer, surveyors and more, organisations
dealing in this sector gain advantage to manufacture effective infrastructure for development of
living standard of human beings (Hairul Bahara and et. al., 2016). In this regard, within
construction industry, for completing a project, employers used to make a proper professional
team which includes project-manager, engineers, technical people, skilled, semi-skilled and
unskilled labours etc. In order to manufacture a building project, professional team helps
effectively in managing the entire work related to construction activities. Along with this, it
would also help in ensuring that the project is constructed by using effectively required
technology as per standardisation as well as includes the most cost effective methods also (van
der Laan and Velthuis, 2016). Since for completing a construction project as per client
requirement, it is essential for professionals to translate the design into reality.
For this process, each professional has assigned with a specific role and responsibility to
complete and manage the key activities of project viz. Time, technology, money, equipment and
people management (Duan and Li, 2016). For example: The main role of geotechnical engineers
is site investigation includes assessment of risk for human beings, their property and identifying
natural hazards like earthquake, sinkhole and landslide etc. While surveyor's duty is to get
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license for building an apartment within a specified area by determining the location, size of
landed property, establish a beacon on site for defining boundaries (Wynne, 2016). Along with
this, architects make a proper building plan for creating the overall design of infrastructure.
Furthermore, for enhancing professionalism, civil engineers, electrical engineers and more also
give their effective contribution for building an effective infrastructure. Therefore, to make
collaboration of each work and put their efforts into completing a project on time, there is need
of contractor who brings a team of professionals together. Contractors oversees the entire
construction activities as well as ensures effectively that all essential measures are taken for
executing a project in prescribed manner (Wang, Guan and Lou, 2018). They also draw up a plan
which includes planning, developing and coordinating activities in making the structures.
P2 Demonstration on scope and linkage between head office and site office structure within a
construction organisation
In a construction company, organisational structure is mainly described on the basis of
head office and site office. Here, head office includes a large number of departments and
members such as Board of Directors, Chief Executive Officer, Legal & Corporate Services,
Finance & Administration, Engineering, Design & Construction, HR and Marketing Department
etc. While, site office includes mainly a professional team such as project-managers, site
engineers, civil supervisor, labours and more (Alonso González, 2016).
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Head office structure plays an important role in construction organisation in designing,
developing and managing the project for building a site effectively. They interact with clients for
understanding their demand and desired for developing an infrastructure (Smith and Suzuki,
2018). After then, Design & Construction Department develops plan, design the model of
infrastructure and more. In short, entire departments of Head Office oversee a complete look out
from inception to completion. They will be developed innovated ideas for developing a proper
infrastructure to make proper project management plan (Appelman and Sundar, 2016). The main
responsibilities of these department is to provide adequate amount of resources to site office,
sequencing of overall construction activities, budget, frame activities to complete within the
stipulated time, integrating the professionals and other departments, balancing stakeholders'
conflict interest and more.
On the other hand, site office mainly oversees a particular project and ensure that defects
such as cracks on walls, flooding and dampness, inadequate and non-functional facilities, poor
drainage, poor safety design, poor staircases and even collapse etc. must be avoided while
constructing a building. Here, main responsibilities are played by Geotechnic
Engineer, Land Surveyor, Architects, Structural Engineer, Service Engineers and more
(Shackelford and et. al., 2016). Therefore, they also give more support to construction companies
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Illustration 1: Head Office Structure of Construction Companies

in building a proper infrastructure. In this regard, linkage between both site and head offices of
such organisations is essential to ensure that proper working is going to be done. Communication
between both offices help project-managers in managing and completing the project on time, as
per requirement of client (Onyelowe, 2019). This would also aid in ensuring that adequate
amount of resources is available on construction site with sufficient labours, capital and
technology, to construct building defect free.
P3 Identify the type of contractual work tendered by contractors
A tender can be defined as an offer for working or supplying goods to a company at a
fixed price. Here, at initial step of tendering process refers to invite contractors for submitting
sealed bids for supply of specific goods or construction during a certain time period. In this
regard, to invite contractors, companies designed tenders in a professional and legal manner. It
also ensures that work to be done for government or client is given out in fair way. Therefore,
when client accepts a tender them it is send for binding on both parties i.e. company or
contractor who won the tender must provide goods or services at defined price within agreed
period (Alexander, 2016). When taking about such tendering procedure which involves
complicated process like preparing, checking and giving approvals for tender documents, it has
been analysed that contractual work can be classified into various manner. It includes open
tender; selective tender, negotiated tender and more. Therefore, to go with this process smoothly,
it becomes essential for both contractors and clients to have knowledge about type of contracts. It
includes open tender, serial tender, selective tender and term tender. Generally, types of such
tendering which a company wants to choose is depended on contract nature, construction
complexities, expertise needed and more. But when talking about Government project of any
nation, is usually tend to prepare on open tender basis, in order to keep fair practices without any
prejudice (Duan and Li, 2016). Furthermore, explanation of these types of tenders is described in
following manner:-
 Open Tender: It refers to the main tendering procedures which is employed by both
parties involved within government and private sector (Wood and et. al., 2016). Here, a
client mainly works for advertising the tender offer within local newspaper and
websites. Here, they provide detail and key information of proposed tender to invite
interested contractor to make a bid for given tender. In terms of legal sense like tender
notices, invitation criteria and more, a mere request by client for invited contractor is to
timely submit their bids within given period (Sun and et. al., 2016). The main beneficial
point of this type of tender that it allows all interested contractor to make apply for the
tender. But due to open process, it is hard to select one tender because this process
invites many contractors for a single contract. Here, tender list is usually made without
any bias and favouritism. But it fails to attract established and reputable contractors for
taking the government tenders.
 Selective Tender: It is one of the alternatives which mainly develops for addressing the
limitations and provides advantages over open tendering procedure. Under this
tendering method, client make a short list of contractor which is drawn up on some
specific criteria then invite for submitting their tenders. The purpose of this kind of
tendering is to improve and enhance quality of bids which are received from contractors
and to ensure that selected one must have necessary experience and required
competence to submit the given bids (Moon and et. al., 2017). Along with this, due to
urgency work which are involved mainly for some specific reasons of employer like
security issues in government projects, management for tendering procedure and more.
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This kind of list in general prepared as per recommendation from professional advisers
of Clients, as they have possessed knowledge of past experience of selected contractors.
In short listing the candidates, favouritism may occur along with a greater chance of
occurrence of collusion as well (Virdi, 2017). But it also minimises the cost of
preparing documents and overall procedure of tendering also.
 Negotiated Tender: It is mainly used for projects related to engineering and
construction site, which commerce from tendering until dispute resolutions. Under this
type of tendering, a company invited interested contractors of its choice to submit their
contracts on a certain price (Bonacchi, Altaweel and Krzyzanska, 2018). In this type of
tendering, a strict deadline is used and negotiation is done on the basis of prices that
contractors are bidding to get tender. The advantage part of negotiated tender is that
only established contractors are invited which reduces the risk of failure. Here, cost
work is also relatively higher than other competitive tenders.
P4 Identify the different types of construction companies in the market
The construction companies are generally divided on the basis of contracts they take for
performing a special type of job (Fan and Fu, 2016). Normally, the main job performed by
construction companies defines the nature or categorise them. It includes acquisition of land,
operating, design, execution, maintaining and financial planning, etc. denotes the construction
company type. Since construction refers to the process of building that results either in
completing or remodelling of a structure. Therefore, projects in this regard are commissioned
either privately (through a property owner) or publicly (by a municipal agency). Henceforth,
Highways, residential structures like house and garages, pipelines fitting, large facilities
including hospitals and stadiums etc. type of construction work are categorized into four type of
companies (Virdi, 2017).
Types of construction work –
 Residential building – It is defined as remodelling, building or repairing the
infrastructure which are built especially for housing of people. It includes those
companies that are experts in both work associated with new buildings or renovating the
existing one (Lai and et. al., 2016). They mostly specialise in public works. Residential
building includes single homes that are owned by a family, duplexes and apartments for
multi-family dwellings, garages and outbuildings like utility sheds etc. In this regard, for
building new homes, in this type of construction involves the work related to installation
of utilities and basic facilities such as electricity, water and sewer, including paving
around the structure.
 Commercial and institutional building – Educational facilities such as schools,
colleges, medical facilities like hospitals, retail stores and shopping centres, sports arenas
and stadiums, etc. type of projects are classified as commercial and institutional building
construction (Shackelford and et. al., 2016). It includes the work related to building new
structures, maintenance and upgrading the existing structures. In general, contracts within
commercial and institutional like building a retail store, shopping centre are
commissioned by privately held companies. While education, medical and sports arenas
etc. type of public facilities managed as well as paid for by government agencies.
 Infrastructure and heavy construction – This type of construction can be defined as
the process of building infrastructure related to road, railways and communications in a
particular area (Smith and Suzuki, 2018). These infrastructures are developed for serving
public interest and undertaking by large private sector and government agencies mostly.
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Here, projects are taken for developing highways, bridges and overpasses, tunnels, transit
systems, pipelines and drainage systems etc.
 Specialised industrial construction – This kind of construction companies take projects
as building structures which require a high degree of technical and specialization skill for
planning, design and construction (Hutter, 2017). These projects are mostly carried out
by for-profit and industrial corporations, where industries like medical, chemical and
power generation take projects for building structures of highly specialised structures. It
includes nuclear power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and more.
Thus, after understanding the type of construction work, construction companies depend upon
job, can be classified in following manner : -
 Small Renovation contractors – It includes those companies that work on small budget
for renovating an established house or official place.
 General contractors – It includes expert organisations for either building or re-building
a work for specific purpose.
 Real-estate developer – This type of company can be defined as a contractor which
takes contracts to build a project at specific location on certain budget.
 Professional construction manager – It defines as a company or a group of individuals
who works as an agent for performing a specific job of construction work.
P5 Explain the relationship between different construction organisations
Today, the landscape related to construction development delivery is considered as
changing with high speed (McNally, 2017). It mostly emphasis on partnering, public/private
partnership, joint venture, strategic alliances and more, to build the infrastructure in more
sophisticated manner. Within UK, the required for private sector delivery and public sector
facilities and services type of construction is on high demand. Here, projects which are
developed by government agencies and managed by both public and privately owned
construction companies, shows collaboration of both parties for building a great infrastructure.
Here, Private Finance Initiative, Build Operate, Transfer (BOT) and more, provides project
financing sources for delivering public sector services. Collaborative relationships among
construction companies are generally developed to construct rails, tunnels, roads,
telecommunications, water and electricity, waste treatment and more (Talbot and Talbot, 2018).
These kinds of innovative procurement are demanded higher level of cooperation among both
public and private sector in order to develop the same within set period of timeframe. According
to Shackelford and et. al. (2016), it has been identified that demand from public has been
considered as more responsible factor for pushing the relationship or partnerships among
different types of construction companies. As this collaboration aids to supply raw materials,
develop appropriate planning, design and construction over a shorter period of time (Pacheco-
Torgal and et. al., 2018). In addition to this, as customer desire to get best solutions for a certain
price instead of being locked in with any one vendor is consequently responsible for raising
demand of collaboration.
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P6 Identify, with examples, modern construction processes and sequences used within today’s
industry, highlighting the way they respond to sustainability needs
P7 Explain contract planning techniques used within micro and macro projects
Micro Planning is generally a community based project which is mainly used to prepare a
road map of the same, for development as well as management of a small project. It described
the entire roles and responsibilities of all associated stakeholders, with clear set targets and
deadlines for construction (Qin and et. al., 2017). It includes a short-term effort for constructing
small projects but delivers great innovation as well. For example- water projects to help people
to easily access the clean drinking water. In this regard, it begins with a planning i.e. choosing
locations as per basis of projects requirement, search find partners or charities who are willing to
buy-in or commit to making investment and supporting for project completion (Mik-Meyer,
2016). After then, once such kind of water project is built, micro planners have built in a
maintenance as well as monitoring feature, which enables them to ensure and track sustainability
for their projects (Eastman, 2018). While Macro planning of construction projects is considered
as the most challenging tasks which are faced by a project team (Botu and et. al., 2016). Here,
during this process of construction planning decisions made have a tremendous impact on overall
successful execution of the project. An important part under macro planning process specially for
housing construction projects includes creation of entire project schedule. This schedule used to
place all the tasks and activities in a logical as well as sequential order. It helps in setting the
priorities and schedule for each task which is necessary to complete the main operational
objectives (Hou, Gong and Zhu, 2016). Along with this, during the macro planning process,
contracts can be organized in a number of ways such as Sequential, Parallel and Staggered.
Herein, sequential projects includes the contracts that can be separated into stages and completed
within a consecutive sequence. While Parallel projects covers independent portions which
happen simultaneously. Other than this, the tasks which may be overlapped falls in category of
Staggered projects within macro planning construction (Reid, 2016).
In this regard, contract planning techniques used within micro and macro projects are bar
charts, critical path analysis, line of balance techniques and precedence diagrams etc. Concept of
these techniques can be analysed by following explanation as -
 Critical path analysis
 Line of balance techniques
 Precedence diagrams
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P8 Identify where BIM impacts upon operations and construction companies
P9 Explain how health & safety has now become an integrated part of the construction process
P10 Describe the government legislation which has benchmarked health & safety within
construction
P11 Discuss the role of collaboration and communication in ensuring safe working practices
M1 Analyse how the construction industry has developed overall in terms of company structures,
it’s employees and contracted work
M2 Analyse the catalyst which connects construction companies, including contracts and
tendering.
M3 Analyse how construction has developed in terms of innovation, designs, and within
contracts for micro and macro projects and the interrelationship with BIM
M4 Demonstrate how the construction industry has benefited through changes in health safety
legislation
D1 Critically evaluate how construction companies have developed their structure and business
ethos
D2 Compare the main factors which differentiate between construction companies, contracts and
tendering
D3 Provide a detailed analysis of how the construction industry has evolved in terms of
innovative construction methods and contracts
D4 Evaluate the impact of health & safety legislation, how it has evolved the drivers for it, and
its advantages or weaknesses within construction.
8

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Online
Three types of tendering methods in construction. 2019. [Online] Available Through:
<https://theconstructor.org/construction/types-of-tendering-methods-in-construction/
6372/>.
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