Chapter-5

CONSTRUCTION PLANNING
Construction Planning
◦ Site surveying and preparation
◦ Arrangement of facilities and job layouts
◦ Selection of personnel
◦ Selection of construction plant and equipment
◦ Material handling system
◦ Construction scheduling: network techniques and bar charts
◦ Use of C.P.M. and PERT for planning, scheduling and controlling of construction works
◦ Procurement procedure for materials
◦ Finance management
◦ Cash flows and financial accounting
◦ Time-cost trade off
Site Surveying and Preparation
Site Surveying is an inspection of an area where work is proposed, to gather
information for initiating construction work, to stake out reference points and markers
that will guide the construction of structure.
Factors to be considered
Remove all the scrubs or jungle if there exists any on the site for
construction
The whole area should be roughly leveled
As a part of site preparation, the trees will be cut off and their roots are
totally uprooted as directed.
Before starting the work the permanent benchmarks are established at a
suitable point in the construction site.
Site Surveying and Preparation contd.
The orientation and trench lines should be correctly laid
out in the construction site
The location for the storage and stacking of the materials
should be definitely set on the ground in the site
Fixing position of the site office, labor shed, access road
and existing roads for trucks and carts etc
Arrangement of Facilities and Shops/Job
Layout/Site Layout
Facility layout refers to the arrangement of machines,
departments, work stations, storage areas and common areas
within an existing or proposed facility.
Job layout refers to the site arrangement to facilitate the
work to proceed in a smooth and ordinary matter.
Objectives of Job Layout
To obtain an uninterrupted supply of materials in adequate amount.
To utilize space efficiently
To utilize labor efficiently
To facilitate communication and interaction at site
To facilitate the entry, exit and placement of materials and people
To promote safety and security measures
Job Layout Plan(Sample)
Job Layout Plan(Sample)
Factors affecting job layout plan
Nature of the project : If it is a multistoried building then it will
require a centrally located lay out scheme. On the other hand if it is a
highway construction project it will require a number of Construction
Centre at suitable location
Access to Site : It facilitates the transportation of the construction
materials and equipment at minimum cost
Nature of Ground : For equipment fixing and movement, we need
solid ground
Temporary Roads : The temporary roads from the nearest road to the
site must be constructed before starting the construction activity.
Factors affecting job layout plan
Construction Methods : Job layout in pre cast needs extra casting
yard where as cast in situ does not need it.
Construction Material : If construction materials are naturally
available nearest site then no need to worry of storage otherwise the
storage of construction material should be carried out in job lay out
plan.
Factors to be considered in Construction
Site Planning/Job Layout
Access to Site : If possible, there should be two openings in the site, one for entry and
the other for exist to allow flow of traffic. Besides there should be a track on the site for
easy and efficient movement of all site traffic.
Storage of Materials
Cement bags should be stored on raised platform with water proofing material, 30 cm
away from the wall and the stack should not exceed 12 bags.
Bricks, tiles and concrete blocks are stacked at ground level of stack not greater than 2m
Aggregate are stacked on a clean hard surface
Inflammable and explosives are kept in safe place
Re-bars should be kept away from moisture to prevent rusting
Timbers should be stacked in a well ventilated shady areas
Factors to be considered in Construction
Site Planning/Job Layout
 Location of machinery and equipment
•Equipment should be kept near the materials it utilizes and as well as near the
place of its use
•For costly equipment, temporary shed should be provided for weather protection
Main office should be located near the entrance
Location of security check points should be in proper place
Accommodation and other facilities like drinking water, telephone, fencing,
hoarding board shall be located properly.
Material Handling System
In the construction industry, the term 'material handling' refers to the delivery,
movement, storage and control of materials and other products.
The main objectives of material handling are as follows:
It should be able determine appropriate distance to be covered.
Facilitate the reduction in material damage as to improve quality.
Reducing overall manufacturing time by designing efficient material movement
Improve material flow control
Creation and encouragement of safe and hazard-free work condition
Improve productivity and efficiency
Better utilization of time and equipment
Guidelines for Material Handling System
The proposed system of material handling should be defined in
terms of needs, objectives and functional specification.
Methods and processes should be standardized to avoid confusion.
Unnecessary handling or movement should be reduced or
eliminated.
Working conditions and methods should have worker safety as the
primary objective.
 Guidelines for Material Handling System
Storage areas should be kept organized and clean.
Sites should be kept safe, clean and easy to move around.
Site waste management plans should be created and
maintained.
Safety equipment such as PPE should be available.
Construction scheduling: network techniques and
bar charts
A Construction Schedule is the graphic representation which shows the listing of project
milestone activities with the starting and completing dates of each activity and the sequential
relationship among various operations in a construction project.
Advantages:
1. It gives clear picture of quantity and type of materials, manpower, machines at different
stages of construction.
2. Resource utilization can be optimized.
3. Monitoring becomes easy.
4. Interrelationship between various activities is known hence their priorities can be set up.
Classification of Scheduling
1. Construction Schedule
2. Material Schedule
3. Labor Schedule
4. Equipment Schedule
5. Financial Schedule
6. Control Schedule
7. Summary Schedule
Methods of Scheduling
Bar Chart or Gant Chart
Linked Bar Chart
Milestone Chart
Network Analysis
CPM (Critical Path Method)
PERT ( Program Evaluation and Review Techniques)
Bar Chart or Gant Chart
It is one of the most popular and widely used techniques for planning and scheduling activities
because the graphical representation of a bar chart makes it easy to read and understand.
This is a horizontal bar chart plotted over time (e.g. days, weeks or months).
Each activity is shown as a bar (its length based on a time estimate).
Depending on task dependencies and resource availability, these bars may be sequential, or
run in parallel.
Each bar is plotted to start at the earlier possible start date.
Bar Chart
Advantages:
It is simple to understand.
Easy to prepare, consume less resources.
Easy to develop and implement, no training is required.
It can be used to show progress.
Appropriate for small projects.
Can be used for resources schedule.
It gives the clear pictorial model of the project.
 Shortcomings of Bar chart
Difficult to construct Bar chart for the large and
complex project due to limitations of the size of paper.
Difficult to find critical path, critical activities, and
floats etc.
Linked Bar Chart
A linked bar chart uses arrows and lines to tie the activities and subsequent items, specifying
the successors and predecessors of every activity.
The previous activities are linked one to another to demonstrate that one activity must be
completed before the other activity can start.
Milestone Chart
A milestone chart shows the relationship between the milestones within the same activity or job
or task.
Thus as compared to the bar chart better control can be achieved with the help of a milestone
chart
Combined activity bar charts can be converted to milestone bar charts by placing small triangles
or circles or a flag at strategic locations in the bars to indicate completion of certain milestones
within each activity or group of activities as shown in the figure
Schedule Network Analysis
The schedule network is a graphical display (from left to right across a page) of all logical
interrelationships between elements of work — in chronological order.
This order is from initial planning through to project closure.
As the project progresses, regular analysis of this network diagram is a check to ensure that the
project is proceeding ‘on track’.
Network Diagram :
Network diagrams are one of the modern tools of project management.
Network diagrams are one of the modern tools of project management. There are two popular
network based scheduling techniques.

Critical Path Method (CPM)

◦ Graphical network- based scheduling technique.
◦ US Government agencies insisted on their use by contractors on major government projects.

Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)

◦ In 1958 US Navy developed project management tool known as PERT for scheduling Polaris Missile
Project.
Terminologies in network diagrams
Activity (Task):
An activity is any identifiable job which requires time, manpower, material and other resources
to complete.
The arrow in a network diagram represents activity.
Concurrent (parallel) activities:
Which can be performed simultaneously and independently to each other.
In the figure, A and B are concurrent activities.
Terminologies in network diagrams
Serial Activities:
•Performed one after the other, in succession.
•In the figure below A and B are serial activities.
Terminologies in network diagrams
Activity duration:
An activity’s duration is estimated the time required for its completion.
Time unit may be hours, days, weeks or months.
Activity duration= Work quantity/Production rate
Event (Node):
The beginning or end of the activity is known as event.
It represents specific time and does not consume time manpower, material, and other
resources.
Two conventions can be used for developing networks are:

Activity on Arrow (AOA)

◦ Here arcs represents activities of the project and nodes represents events

Activity on Node (AON)

◦ Here the nodes represent activities, while arc(arrow) represent the precedent relations
Dummy Activity:
Which doesn’t consume resources like time, cost, manpower, equipment etc.
But is only used to show relationships.
It is represented by Dashed Arrow.
Dummies serve two purposes in network:

Grammatical purpose
◦ It is used to prevent two arrows having the common beginning and end nodes for two or more activities.

Logical purpose:
◦ Dummies are also used to give logical clear representation in the network having an activity common to two
sets of operations running parallel to each other.
Earliest Start time (ES):
It is the earliest possible time an activity or operation can be started.
It is equal to the earliest occurrence time of the tail event of that activity.It is represented either
EST or simply ESi
Earliest Finish Time (EF):
It is the earliest possible time for completion of an activity without delaying the project
completion time.
EF= ES + duration
EFj=ESi+tij
Latest Finish Time (LF):
It is the latest time the activity must be completed without delaying project duration.
It is equal to the latest occurrence time of the head event.
Latest Start time (LS):
It is the latest possible time; an activity can be started without delaying the project.
LS= LF – duration
LSi=LFj – tij
Rules to draw Network diagram
Numbering the Events
Fulkerson’s Rule :
For any activity, the number on the Tail Event should not be greater than that on the Head Event.
In other words, the number on Head Event must always be greater than that on tail Event.
Critical Path Method (CPM)
Developed by Du-pont chemical works-USA in 1956/57 and used for preparing maintenance
shutdown schedule of chemical plant for the first time.
Unlike bar chart, it uses arrows to represent activities and length of arrows has no relation with
activity duration. Start or end of an activity is called event and it is shown by circles with the
special designation.
Terminology:
Starting event is called tail event and ending event is called head event.
Some event plays dual both the role of head and tail such events are called dual role events.
Activity which must be completed before start of another activity is predecessor.
Activity which starts after completion of an activity is its successor.
Activity B is successor of activity A and activity A is predecessor of activity B.
Critical path:
The longest path in a CPM network is called critical path.
There may be more than one critical path in a network.
Project duration:
The time required to travel critical path is called project duration.
Critical activities:
The activities lying on critical path are called critical activities.
Floats
Float means the available free time for an activity, which is useful for managers to manage the
limited resources.
An activity has four types of floats.
Total Float (TF):
It is the total free time for an activity i.e. maximum time by which completion of an activity can
be delayed without affecting project completion time.
Significance:
It works as buffer time for managers, to meet contingencies like machine breakdown, labour
absentism, etc.
TF= (LF-ES)-tij = ( LF-tij )- ES
= LS – ES

Example numerical:
Total float for this activity A-B is (LS – ES) = (14 – 9) = 5
Free Float (FF):
It is the spare time allowable for an activity so that the start time of succeeding activities are not
affected.
It is based on the possibility that all events occur at their earliest time.
FF = (EF -ES) – tij =EF – (ES+tij)
Numerical example:
Free float for the activity A-B is = 20 – (9 + 10) = 20 – 19 = 1
Independent Float (IF or Ind. Float):
It is the maximum delay allowable for an activity so that the start time of succeeding activities are not
affected.
It may come negative but should be taken as zero.
IF = EF – LS – tij
Numerical example:
Independent float for the activity A-B is = 20 – (14 + 10) = 20 – 24 = -4 (considered as 0)
Interfering Float (Int. Float):
It is name given to head event slack. It is the difference between TF & FF.
Int. Float= TF – FF
Interfering float for the activity A-B is = 5 – 4 = 1
Advantages of Critical Path Method
Makes dependencies visible.
Organizes large and complex project.
Enables the calculation of float of each activity.
Encourages the project manager to reduce project duration.
Increases visibility of the impact of schedule revisions.
Provides opportunities to respond to the negative risk going over-schedule.
Shortcomings
In large and complex projects, there will be thousands of activities and dependency relationships.
This method doesn’t account for resource and resource allocation.
Project Evaluation and Review Technique
(PERT)
Like CPM, PERT is also a network based planning tool developed by US Navy in 1958. It was used
for scheduling Polaris Missile Project.
But, unlike CPM, PERT is used for novel projects like research and development (R & D) where it
is difficult to estimate activity duration accurately.
CPM is used for projects with prior experience such as civil engineering works.
It is a probabilistic approach for estimating project duration of an activity and event-oriented
network diagram.
PERT is preferred for those projects in which correct time determination for various activities
cannot be made.
PERT uses three-time estimate for each activity with a view to overcoming uncertainty in time
estimates.
Optimistic time estimate (t0):
•It is minimum time i.e. the shortest possible time required to complete the activity in ideal
conditions.
Pessimistic time estimate (tp):
•Maximum time required to complete the activity in the worst condition.
Most probable time estimate (tm):
•Time required to complete the activity in normal circumstances.
From these three time estimates, we calculate average time i.e. expected time (te) using the
following formula.
te=(t0+4 tm+tp)/6
PERT assumes optimistic time and pessimistic time are equally likely to occur while the most
likely time is four times more likely to occur than the other.
Similarly, standard deviation (σ) is calculated using,
S.D. (σ) = (tp-t0)/6 and
Variance (σ2) = [(tp-t0)/6]2
 Numerical
Find out the Expected Time of each engineer mentioned below. Which engineer you will choose
and why ? Who is more certain in completing the job ?

Types to tm tp
NTC Engineer 5 9 12
Ncell Engineer 4 5 9

The less variance is more certain

Time Cost Trade-off
The Judicious balance between time and cost is called time-cost trade off
It can be achieved by studying the availability and demand of these resources for a given project
.
Procurement Procedure for Material
Identification of Materials Package
Materials Quantity Estimation
Scheduling Materials Requirement
Materials Procurement Enquiries
Finalization of Source of Material Procurement
Monitoring Materials Delivery Schedule
Financial Management in Construction
Project
Financial management is the effective control of all monetary
related issues associated with a project. The areas include
―controlling expenditure, advising on cash flow and payments.
Benefits of Good Financial Management
Make effective and efficient use of resources
Achieve objectives and fulfill commitments to stakeholders
Become more accountable to donors and other stakeholders
 Gain the respect and confidence of funding agencies, partners and beneficiaries
Gain advantage in competition for increasingly scarce resources
 Prepare for long-term financial sustainability
Cash Flow Management
Cash flow management is the process of monitoring, analyzing and adjusting business cash
flows.
Cash is the most important current assets for the operations of a business
Components : Initial Investment, Operating Cash Flows, Terminal Cash Flows
Initial Investment represents the relevant cash outflow or the cost of setting up the project.
Operating Cash Flows are the relevant cash inflows and outflows resulting from the operation of
the project during its economic life
Terminal Cash Flow is the relevant cash inflow occurring at the end of the product life cycle on
account of project liquidation.