Construction Staffing and Scheduling

Georgia construction attorney, Mark Cobb serves as adjunct faculty at Thomas University. Currently, he is teaching a class on construction law and business, and one of his students, Eric Persson., is today’s guest blogger, and he is solely responsible for its content.   Eric is a junior at Thomasville University studying business management. His hometown is Gothenburg, Sweden, and he would like to pursue a career in chocolate production after graduating.  In addition to his academic pursuits, Eric is the captain of the TU’s nationally-ranked soccer team.

by Eric Persson

As we all know, people are the fundamental building blocks of any constructions. Without workers a construction project will never see the light. On big projects many parties are involved in the construction, these can include; general contractor, subcontractors, sub-subcontractors, architects etc. In order for the different operations and functions to smoothly work, it is crucial for any party that they have the right staff, at the right time, in the right place.

Staffing is crucial when working with construction. It gives the project manager a better understanding when it comes to scheduling. Scheduling is another part of a construction project that is very important as well. By scheduling the work, owners can get a better understanding in factors like time and cost. In order to better understand how a construction project is carried out, I believe it is necessary to address two main areas. First, I will address the importance of having the right staff in place. Second, I will address the concept of project scheduling.

Staffing Construction Projects:

Having competent and good workers is good for any business. It makes the managers job much easier. Having a worker that is competent, skilled, reliable, self going, humble etc. creates a better work-environment for all people involved. I believe that a good work-environment is crucial in order to perform at the highest level. This can not be achieved if one or more workers are unreliable or unskilled. It will cause the company to some how compensate for the workers that should have complete the function in the first place.

As mentioned earlier, it is crucial to have the right people, at the right place, at the right time in order to effectively complete a project. Staffing includes recruiting, training and maintaining of staff. It is the process of selecting individuals to perform specific functions in the operation. People are a company’s most valuable resource. The workers in a company determines the quality of work that in this sense will determine the reputation of the firm. Having good staff on-board, creates a competitive advantage for the company, in which the quality of work reflects the company itself. A scholar that supports my point is Smriti Chand, who wrote an article entitled, “Staffing: It’s Meaning, Nature and Importance”. In her article she says, “Staffing is the key to the efficient performance of other functions of management. If an organization does not have competent personnel, it can’t perform planning, organization and control functions properly” (Chand). This supports my point, that not many people think of staffing as fundamental factor in a construction project, when in fact it is. It provides a way for managers to be effective and resulting in saving both time and money.

Construction Scheduling:

As Chand already mentioned staffing goes hand in hand with planning and scheduling. Planning and scheduling is the heart of a construction project. It determines how successful the project will end up being. Construction managers worldwide have tried to make this operation as effective as possible in order to save money and time. There is no reason why the roof of a house should arrive to the building site when the walls are not even built yet. Timing is a crucial factor when it comes to scheduling. Segmenting a project into smaller projects is vital. By doing so, a project manager can carry out the necessary operations with precision and timing. Today, most project managers use software to schedule their projects. Depending on the complexity of the project, different softwares are use. The most common techniques use in these softwares include Bar Charts, Critical Path Method and Line of Balance.

The Bar Charts is the easiest of the three, due to the simplicity. The adaptation capabilities in this software makes it easy to change operations in the project, making it the most used scheduling technique. There are a lot of things that needs to be considered when planning a project. This could be logistics, requirements, materials, and constraints. For example, where to buy materials from. The location of the store where materials are purchased. How to get the materials from the store to the building site. All these events needs to be well planned and executed in order for the project be completed in time.

Conclusion:

It should now be evident that staffing and scheduling are important operations when it comes to understanding the process of construction. Staffing is the process of having the right workers do what they do best, in order to be more efficient, and to save money and time. Staffing a project includes operations like; recruiting, training and maintaining staff within a company. Scheduling is an operation that goes hand in hand with staffing. Scheduling a project means segmenting the project into smaller operations that can be recorded on completion. Both if this operations gives the reader a better insight on how construction as a whole works.

Although its a little lower tech than mentioned in the article, the Cobb Law Group offers free calendaring wheels which can help with projecting project scheduling deadlines, calculating mechanics and materialmen’s lien deadlines, payment bond claim deadlines, etc. If you wish to received a free calendaring wheel, please click on the banner on the right hand side of this page or click here >>

References :
Chand, Smriti , “Staffing: It’s Meaning, Nature and Importance”, Business Management, Retrieved 16 February 2015.
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