Construction Project Planning

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Published on Wednesday, 02 May 2012 09:21

When developing a plan, the most common project emphasis is either cost control or schedule control. Most projects are  divided into expense categories with associated costs. In these cases, construction planning is cost or expense oriented. Within the categories of expense, a distinction is made between direct performance costs and indirect project completion costs. i.e. interest on borrowed funds and overhead items are commonly treated as indirect costs.

On other projects, the precise schedule of work activities is critical and is the emphasis in the planning process. In these cases, the plan itinerary  and agenda sets the precedence and the due date of each and every activity and maintains an efficient scheduling of the available resources. Traditional scheduling procedures emphasize the maintenance of task precedence resulting in critical path scheduling or efficient use of resources over time, resulting in shop scheduling procedures.

Finally, most projects require some consideration of both cost and scheduling over time, so that planning, monitoring and record keeping must consider both dimensions. In these cases, the integration of schedule and budget information is a major concern.