A SYSTEM APPROACH TO EFFECTIVE PROJECT MANAGEMENT CONTROL

By

Author

Presented To

Department of Environmental Design

ABSTRACT
It is a pervasive tradition for the building process to be split up for a number of different parties to do different things at different times. There are many reasons for this but most important is the increased specialization in the process. This trend is likely to continue but yet there is need for integration since decisions taken in isolation may cause distruption or distortion somewhere along the line of the whole process. This research has been attempted in order to investigate the ways by which rationalised decisions at the various stages of a project can enhance control and coordination throughout the whole process; that is from design to practical completion of the construction work. The following factors have been found to hinder both the progress, control and coordination of construction programmes. a) Design changes (sometimes made as late as the construction stage) which may be due to various reasons. b) Design inadequancies. c) Design priorities being at complete variance with other requirements as function, contract administration, construction practice etc. These should be mutually benefitial to all parties. v d) Management procedure adopted. (including the relationships between the various parties to the contract, and, office and site management of the contractor). Sometimes the practice is non-complementary. e) Government involvement through the introduction of economic measures and regulatory sanctions. This thesis takes the premises that coordination and control of building project are intrinsic parts of creative and functional design,, well established contract practice and procedure, and of sound construction practice; that the various parties involved at different stages of the project process do not have to think in isolation but rather to have in their contemplations what could be both the negative and positive effects of each others contributions to the realisation of a project management. The success of any project will depend upon this ability to closely align the requirements of these various parties both in terms of cost, quality , functional values, aesthetic satisfaction and the ability to meet the completion date. It will also depend upon the parties being able to realise the prime objectives for which they have been set up-without mutilating any of the project goals. It then means that effective project development and management is a game where there should be no winner or loser. It is a game of compromises within acceptable tolerance. vi The thesis itself consists of eight chapters. Chapter one highlights the general problems of the construction industry in Nigeria and develops a theme for the purpose of the thesis. Specific objectives were set and a brief account of methodology given to show how the proposed objectives might be accomplished. An evaluation of the theory of the thesis concept was given in chapter two coupled with an account of what has been done along the same line by other researchers. Chapters three and four provide the basic data for the development of the concept. Specifically an account of the procedural matters was rendered in chapter three while chapter four provides the information on the flaws existing in the application of the procedural matters discussed in chapter three. In chapter five and six the concept and the basic application of proposed system were described. The concept developed is based on finding the common grounds where cooperation, hence control can be accomplished. Such information is then fed into a system operating on both feedforward and feedback control system. In other words the stability of the system is assured by the fact that both the feedforward (Ff) and Feedback (Fb) are equal for each stage of a project development.