Construction project management, as its name suggests, is the process of supervising, regulating, and managing construction operations. CPM works with deadlines, so it’s important to have all stages of the project perfectly planned.
There are usually six stages to a construction project. These are:
Table of Contents
1. Conception
The first stage of the construction project is the conception stage. It’s also called the initiation stage. During this stage, communication with the client is key to finding out what they want and need and how you will deliver it to them. It’s important to carry out a feasibility study to see if the project is doable. It’s also key to include design sketches to make sure you and the client agree on what’s to be done.
2. Pre-construction
This stage tries to cover everything that might go wrong and how it will be solved, which means you’ll be asking a lot of questions and storing the answers to work on the project. These questions can cover your communication plan with the client, what will the budget be, what are the possible risks of the project, how to solve them and where will this information be stored. It’s extremely important to have a project management tool where your team and stakeholders can access all the project’s data to see the progress of the project in real-time.
3. Execution
After covering all the bases and planning your construction project very thoroughly, the time has come for execution. This means your team and contractors will start building from the plans you made. Communication with the client is key in this stage. Projects usually fail at this point because of this reason.
It’s extremely important to keep everyone involved in the project in the loop, especially when so many people will work in phases of the project and will not be involved all the time. It’s crucial that there is a single place such as using construction management software like Jonas Premier where your team can access all the project information, especially the mistakes that were made and how to solve them.
4. Commissioning
Commissioning has three stages. The first one is the walkthrough. Here, your team checks the final result of the construction to make sure there are no issues. It’s like quality control. It’s important to have a construction punch list to make sure all the small details are covered. The second stage is presenting the finished construction to the client so that they can inspect it. If they find any mistakes, they must be corrected as soon as possible. Finally, the third stage is educating the client on how to use the systems in the building, such as software, plumbing, and electricity.
5. Occupancy and warranty
This is the stage when the client moves into the building. Even though you won’t be on-site, you will still be responsible for the project depending on your contract or your federal or local warranty policies. It’s important to ask your legal department what warranty you have and how long it lasts.
6. Project Closure
When the warranty period finishes, the project has officially ended. The contract you had with the client has been complied with, but this doesn’t mean the work is over. To make sure your construction team takes full advantage of the project you just finished, hold a meeting and create a project postmortem report where you detail what went right, what went wrong, and how to improve it. All this data should be put in a shared tool where all your team has access to it, so next time, you can skip these mistakes.
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