Project Planning and Management in Construction Industry

Running head: LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Logistics and Supply Chain Management: Project planning and management in construction
industry
Name of the student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

1
LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
1. Project statement
The paper mainly reflects on the project planning and management in construction
industry in context to logistics and supply chain management. According to Khattak et al.
(2015), the council of the supply chain management professionals generally helps in defining
the logistics as a part of the supply chain procedure that is generally used in order to
effectively plan, implement as well as control the efficient reverse and forward flow of goods
storage as well as services. On the other hand, supply chain management is used in order to
manage the flow of various types of services as well as goods which further involves the
movement as well as storage of the raw materials as well as finished goods from one point to
another (Parikh and Pitroda 2014). Proper planning as well as management is very much
important within the construction industry for managing the logistic and SCM as they
generally help in managing the flow of information as well as materials between the relevant
organizations as well as other stakeholders.
The significance of SCM is mainly discussed properly in context to the scientific
literature for improving the performance of the projects in the construction industry. It is
found that as the construction industry is mainly considered as one of economic as well as
social activity of every country, the use of SCM related strategies are found to be very much
helpful in achieving proper competitiveness within the projects of construction firms (Brown
2015). In addition to this, it is found that as construction is a worldwide activity, it generally
contains some of the special charteristics as well as project that are of different types, sizes as
well as complexities therefore it is very much necessary to integrate he supply chain as well
as meds of the markets within the construction projects when it is generally delivered to the
clients or to the customers.

2
LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Furthermore, it is found that supply chain is one of the networks of the firms that is
generally involved with various types of complex activities as well as multi procedures. It is
identified with such level of complexities, it is quite necessary to manage the
interdependencies of the project that further needs to be properly coordinated in order to
improve the performance of SCM (Chun et al. 2015). It is found that in construction industry
there are number of supply chain as they generally deal with number of construction projects.
The project generally differs from each other as the needs and requirements of each of the
project clients generally varies and therefore the characteristics of the projects are different.
Moreover, it is identified that the utilization of logistics and SCM generally increases
complexity and in order to handle those complexities, it is quite necessary to have proper
planning and management related strategies. The complexities can be managed by connecting
points, by communicating as well as by using agile management procedures (Chileshe et al.
2016).The problems or issues that are associated with logistics and SCM in construction
industry can be resolved by connecting points with the help of critical path method so that
this project management technique can be utilized in reflecting the sequence of activities
within the schedule so that the problems that is mainly associated with the organization can
be handled easily.
2. Project report
2.1 Clear description of the topic and its context in the construction industry
The paper mainly focuses on the project planning and management in construction
industry for logistic and supply chain management. It is found that Supply chain management
generally involves proper understanding about the breakdown as well as traceability of
various products as well as services, people, activities, organization, information as well as
resources for transforming the raw materials into finished product (Handfield et al. 2015).
The construction-based supply chain and, logistics are generally affected by many problems

3
LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
as well as issues. Most of the problems are generally developed not in the conversion
procedure but also in the different interfaces which generally exists within the supply chain.
Some of the issues as well as challenges includes lack of coordination, design problems, poor
quality of materials as well as due to different communication between the stakeholder who
are generally involved with the project. It is found that for resolving the issues as well as
problems that are associated with logistic and SCM industry, it is quite necessary to plan as
well as manage the project effectively.
The paper mainly reviews number of journals as well as articles in order to gather
proper information about logistics and SCM in construction industry and how project
planning and management is necessary. It is found that in order to gather the data, secondary
data collection method is generally used. Furthermore, the paper analyzes the results and
provides proper recommendations.
2.2 Literature review
A literature review in implementing Supply Chain Management in Construction
Project Planning is an essential part for the further researches to be conducted. This is done to
find out what the future scope lays in this context for finding out a feasible procedure for
implementing Supply Chain Management in Construction Project planning and to find out the
gaps in the literature that have been published so far based on the topic (Chun, Hwang and
Byun 2015). Following is thus a literature review based on the researches published by
various researches on the successful implementation of the Supply Chain Management in the
project planning for the construction industry. The literature review is thus accumulated from
the studies conducted through the various researchers focusing on the project planning
regarding the Supply Chain Management in the construction industry. This literature review
would be conducted through the study of various literatures in this regard to find out the past
researches done previously to find out the insights and outcomes of the researches and further

4
LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
finding the scope of these researches. Finally, the literature review would be concluded
through finding the gaps in the literatures reviewed.
Past Researches in the area
According to authors, Cus-Babic et al. (2014), the term called Supply Chain Planning
or SCP is based on the planning of different aspects in a supply chain. This involves the
supply chain members, their involvement regarding the planning, and the insights of the
members during the process implementation. The author also points out further that the
integration of the processes during the planning of the supply chains in the construction
industry can form a reason for the increasingly decreasing number of the successful adoption
of Supply Chain Management in the construction projects. This literature has been studied
thoroughly to find the various reasons for which construction industry has been facing
increasing amounts of problem in Supply Chain Management implementation in spite of the
SCM system being the solution to the construction problems as per conducted researches so
far. The author also suggests that there should be various frameworks developed that would
help in the people related to the construction industry find the proper way of implementing
the Supply Chain Management, such that it would become one of the most efficient solutions
to the impending and lingering problems, rather than becoming a problem for the planning of
the projects itself.
According to further studies of the literature, the authors Monczka et al. (2015), have
identified the problems that people in the construction industry often face regarding the
implementation of a supply chain management and use it accordingly in the project planning.
For improving the state of the Supply Chain Planning in the construction industry, the authors
have suggested a thesis that helps in the development of a Supply Chain Planning framework
that involves the utilization and contribution of the main contractors, the suppliers as well as

5
LOGISTICS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
the subcontractors. The primary idea of the authors was to have an improved Supply Chain
Planning based on the enhanced Supply Chain Planning and collaboration. The framework
thus developed eliminates all the involvement of the common problems raised in the
construction industry from the perspective of both Supply Chain Management and Supply
Chain Planning. Along further study of the framework, it was identified that the framework
works along with the previous version of the sales and operation planning prepared for
construction industries and mostly has a generic approach for the synthesis of the planning in
general.
Upon further referring to further literatures, various other framework of planning the
Supply Chain Management for the construction industry has been witnessed. One of them by
the authors Thunberg, Rudberg and Gustavsson (2017), were based on the development of
planning of the construction projects focusing on the substrates of the outcomes of the
project, the input from the clients, the structure and operations of the organization, the
process in general, the key performance measurements and utilization of the IT tools
including the ways they are implemented or being planned to be used in the project. The first
objective that the framework aids in focuses on working with the development of the
framework itself merging it to the previous planning and schedules. The authors believe that
this would help in solving the problems of common logistics (Koolwijk et al. 2018).
However, the authors also point out that before implementing the framework, it is absolutely
necessary that the people involved in the project identifies the problems or the gaps in the
planning of the project regarding the implementation of the Supply Chain Management and
how the Supply Chain Planning can help in solving those issues as a whole. Therefore, the
objectives should be made clear when the organization working on the construction project is
developing the plan for the project. The framework developed as such in this particular piece