Types of Construction Projects with Examples

Construction projects are segregated as below:

1. Building Projects
 Residential
 Commercial and other buildings
Ex: Single, Multi-Storey Buildings, Hospitals, Temples, Government Buildings, recreational Facilities,
Small Schools
1. Heavy Engineering Projects
Ex: Railways, Road, Bridges, Hydraulic Structure, Water Treatment and Water power supply
1. Industrial Project
Ex: construction of Power plant, Petrochemical plant, large steel plant
Real-life Examples of Construction Project
1. Problem Statement: Quality concern for Tata Group while it is constructing a Power plant in
Gujarat
Concept Used: They used TATA BUSINESS EXCELLENCE MODEL to measure standards of work. This
model helps their company work better by measuring quality as this help to evaluate and overcome
risk. They give extra time for planning for quality work to avoid having rework, and they are done
with the help of great support from their leadership.
Ex: During the planning phase, they got a problem where the project team was working on both
aboveground and belowground construction activities simultaneously, which may cause conflicts
and delays in work.
For this, they started belowground construction, and once that is done, they checked for quality of
work. After that, they started aboveground structure. In this way, they avoided rework and had an
effective solution.
2.  Problem Statement: Before constructing a building, 60feet below evacuation needs to be done
before the start of the foundation. This activity will take three months to complete, and any further
delay in this critical activity will delay the whole project. A traditional method of updating the
progress every month will not be efficient for such a critical activity.
Productivity Analysis is used
Approach:
Planning: Started by measuring the amount of rock to be evacuated for the work to be done. After
that, ways to do it need to be finalized to get the optimum method considering time and cost.
Various methods include the use of chemicals to split or blast, blasting rock using dynamite or
combination. Once this is finalized, how many times in a day should this activity need to be done
should be finished by considering resource allocation. For this, they started with one shift per day,
taking cost into consideration.
Tracking: After seeing the first week result, they were lag by expectations, and the same thing was
repeated for next week also. To compensate for the previous lag and get updated as per plan, they
started increasing the shift to two shifts per day. This helped in covering lag and get the work done
as per plan till the 7th week.
At 8th week there was a sudden unexpected condition in the land which caused the delay in work.
After investigation, they understood that this was due to unknown hard rock, which will continue for
the site. They collocated the delay time and understood that it takes an extra four weeks to
complete the project. They looked for other ways of blasts to get this done in time. The technical
team suggested an alternative for this and told that by following the choice, they would complete
the work in time, but it is cost-intensive. As this is a high cost, clients were advised to give a deadline
extension of 4 weeks, and an extended deadline was announced to all the stakeholders.
 Storage: All the data that is noted is then stored for future references. Whenever any similar project
takes place, the company started to have a look at this and plan accordingly to adjust time and cost-
effectively.
Conclusion: Productivity Analysis will help in long and critical activity analysis and help to plan for
the future if there is any delay in past. In the above example, we understood where we are as per
plan by tracking the results every week. When we understood that we could immediately increase
the shift when we lag from expectation, these types of changes or modifications can be done if we
regularly have productivity analysis.
Unique Challenges of Construction Management
Every sector will be having unique problems based on the situation. We want to discuss a few
unique issues in Construction management.
1. Poorly defined objectives
2. Scope of project changes regularly
3. Unskilled Employees
4. Employees not taking Accountable for their work
5. Safety and risk issues in the construction area for employees – Hazard Management
6. Poor communication
7. Time and Budget Management
8. Unrealistic Expectations