4 Essential Construction Project Management Terms You Need to Know

1- Construction Project management:

Why is the management of structure projects required? We use construction management to ensure that the project will be completed as designed, on time, and within the project budget.

What if someone can complete a project as per design, on time, and within the project budget without any management, do we still need to perform the management of structure projects?? I believe in a very small project the answer is no.

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But in the bigger projects there is another benefit of the construction project management is to formalize and organize the relationship between the client (The owner of the project) and the contractor (responsible for executing the project).

Most clients do not trust the contractors to be solely responsible for project execution and they assign third-party consultants to monitor the contractor’s performance and to create management systems.

2- Construction project management systems

The concept of a construction project management system exists since the beginning of history, could you imagine that the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt or the Great Wall of China have been built without project management? Although they were built thousands of years ago, I am sure that there was a construction project management system.

Always large-scale governmental projects were the impetus for making important decisions that became the basis for project management. The modern era construction project management systems started in the late 19^th century in the United States, where mega projects such as the transcontinental railroad began construction in the 1860s. Suddenly, business leaders found themselves faced with the daunting task of organizing the manual labor of thousands of workers and the processing and assembly of unprecedented quantities of raw material.

From that date till today, the construction project management systems are being developed and enhanced. Nowadays, there are management organizations such as PMI (Project Management Institute), IPMA (International Project Management Association), AACE International ( Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering), etc. which keep preparing and updating construction management systems and provide effective techniques to manage the projects and create a management plan.

3- Construction project manager

The construction project manager could be one person or a team or even an organization. The construction project manager who represents the client is responsible for monitoring the progress and the quality of the project and keeping an eye on the contractor’s performance.

However, the construction project manager who represents the contractor is responsible for building the project and both positions are the key to the project success.

The challenges that the construction project manager face needs his knowledge to be one inch deep (not to sink in small details) and one mile wide (to be involved in almost everything in the project). The project management institute PMI has created a special certification for project managers called PMP Project Management Professional which identifies the project process and how the project manager should deal with a project.

4-project management software for construction

Project management software are tools for management, and it will not create a project management plan itself, it is all about the proper input you feed these tools the more accurate results you get from the software.

The type of management software depends on the required output, their software provides full control of the project such as SAP Business Management Software Solutions, and other software provides powerful scheduling tools such as Primavera Professional Project Management, and Microsoft Project MS Project. And in my opinion, Microsoft Excel is a very powerful project management software for construction. As we said earlier it all depends on what are your requirement and expectations to select the right management software.

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