Improvements to

Construction
Supervision Services

Describes what is currently being performed under the

current methodology and how this will be changed

D. Oxley
5/29/2013
 Improvements to Construction Supervision Services

Contents
What are the Objectives of Site Supervision?

Who are the Players?

What are the Services to be Provided by the site at present?

What Changes are needed to be made?

How will these be implemented?

References

Job Descriptions
CS-02-06 (Works Progress Reports)
CS-04-03 (Inspection Requests)
CS-04-04 (Material & Shop Drawing Review)
Site Inspection Manual Introductory Sheets

Attachments
Revised F-CS13 (Daily Site Report)

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 Improvements to Construction Supervision Services

What are the Objectives of Site Supervision?

 Sites need to be staffed at all times so that the works being carried out by the contractor
is supervised through all stages. The stages of the contractor’s works include the
following:
o Mobilization of plant and equipment
o Mobilization of staff
o Shop drawing and Material Submittals for review and approval
o Installation of temporary works, such as scaffolding and formwork
o Construction activities from commencement, especially new activities, through to
completion
o Witness of testing of materials on site, e.g. concrete
o Witnessing of tests to MEP services
o Inspection of areas prior to cover-up
o Inspection of the delivery to site
o Inspection of the incorporation of materials on site
o Delivery and installation of equipment on site
o Carrying out snagging
o Witnessing for Testing and Commissioning

 There needs to be full reporting of the ongoing activities on site, as follows:

o Daily activities of individual staff members
o Weekly reports to head office
o Monthly reports to head office
o Monthly Report to the Client
o Maintenance of the Document Control Logs for:
 Correspondence In
 Correspondence Out
 Shop drawing submittals
 Material submittals
 Inspection Requests
 Material Inspection Requests
 Site Instructions
 Requests for Information

 The staff needs to be fully aware of what is happening on the site at all times.
 The RE needs to be fully aware of all issues from design to administration to
construction to handing over that are happening on the site.

Who are the Players?

Sites vary in size and complexity; therefore, vary in the staffing numbers and the related
positions. On large sites there maybe more than one person allocated to a particular position,
and may have staff reporting to them or maybe reporting to other staff. These sites will also
have increased demands on the time of the individuals due to the scale of the works, and more
management tasks are required to be fulfilled by staff in charge of others.

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On smaller sites the manning dictated by the Client and/or the pricing mechanism may not allow
for numerous positions - and the work load has to be shared out amongst the available staff.
The smaller scale of operations dictates that some particular aspect of the activities on site,
whether by the contractor or SDC, will not fully occupy the time of the staff member for the
whole day. Therefore, they may have to perform other activities and tasks that would normally
be carried out by others – as the staff members must remain flexible and adaptable accordingly.
The Job Descriptions that form part of the Supervision Operating Procedures have been issued
to all the staff and each has the general clause that allows for the flexibility mentioned above,
such as:
Perform the duties of other staff on site when no staff is allocated to such descriptions (if
matching his specialty) with the evaluation of the management and assistance of the
central technical services.

The summary of responsibilities from the Job Descriptions for each position is given below:

Resident Engineer: Responsible for co-ordinating with the Design Project Manager;

Managing the site Supervision Engineers and associated SDC staff;

Supervising the construction activities on site during all stages of the

project;

Review and approve the application for payment of contractor’s work.

Senior Engineer: Responsible to co-ordinate and assign the supervision team of the
discipline construction activities on site;

Review and approve transmittals and inspect the quality of the works
executed on site.

Site Engineer: Responsible for observing all assigned work activities through
examination and verification on site;

Responsible for documenting the results of the observations as they

relate to the acceptance criteria defined in the contract documents.

Field Inspector: Responsible for observing all assigned work activities through
examination and verification on site;

Responsible for documenting the results of the observations as they

relate to the acceptance criteria defined in the contract documents.

In particular it should be remembered that the RE is the engineer on the job site who is directly
responsible for the day-to-day administration of the project. In order to be able to fulfill this role
the RE needs to be:

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 Intelligent, Competent and of a strong Character to lead

 Experienced in managing with strong leadership
 Experienced in contract administration
 Knowledgeable in contract law, procurement regulations & specification language
 Experienced in estimating & negotiating
 Educated to degree level
 Experienced in construction processes from basics of inspection through to Senior
Engineer
 An effective communicator
 Able to anticipate and solve problems
 Make informed decisions
 Able to control the project without antagonizing people by having expertise in
supervision and personnel management
 An effective supervisor to motivate his staff.

The duties of the RE in administering the contract include ensuring that the works are not only
technically correct by being in accordance with the contract documents (drawings and
specifications) - but are performed within the time schedule. The Resident Engineer must also
then be competent enough to carry out the following activities as part of his tasks:

 Maintains daily diary in an approved manner

 Documents job meetings, conferences, telephone conversations & important
discussions
 Processes contract documents, i.e. change proposals
 Keeps everybody informed of significant occurrences
 Periodic updates of progress & performance

What are the Services to be Provided by the site at the present?

Reporting:

Standard Operating Procedure CS-02-06 (Procedure for Work Progress Reports to Main Office)
has been issued to all the Resident Engineers and either hard copies or soft copies are with the
site staff, so all staff have been made aware of the requirements of this procedure. In fact, the
procedure is one of those that have been in circulation for many years.

There are clearly defined responsibilities and method in the text of the procedure:

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 Improvements to Construction Supervision Services

4.1 The individual engineers are responsible to complete their daily reports to be used in
the compilation of the weekly and monthly reports.

6.1.1 All Site Engineers must keep daily notes of work progress and problems
encountered during the day and have available for inspection by the HSD (Head of
Supervision Department) or RE, if requested. The report is to include the activities
performed together with any discrepancies/observations that have taken place on
the day. These details are to be recorded on Daily Report Form F-CS13/A

In general, all the sites submit Monthly Reports to the Main Office, but not all submit the
Weekly Reports.

It is not know how many sites or individual engineers write a daily log, but the number is
low. This needs improvement.

Review of Materials and Shop Drawing Submittals:

Standard Operating Procedure CS-04-04 (Procedure for material & Shop Drawing Submittals
Review) has been issued to all the Resident Engineers and either hard copies or soft copies are
with the site staff, so all staff have been made aware of the requirements of this procedure. In
fact, the procedure is one of those that have been in circulation for many years.

There are clearly defined responsibilities and method in the text of the procedure:

4.4 The RE is responsible for monitoring and tracking the submittals, and ensuring the
required action is correctly performed within the times restraints of the contract
conditions.

6.1 Persons undertaking submittal review activities covered by this procedure will
familiarize themselves with the requirements of the Project Specification, Design
Drawings and other relevant documentation.

There appear to be no issues in this activity on the sites. The Quality Objective charts
indicate that the sites are returning the contractor’s submittals within the periods
allowed under the contract.

This is an activity that is carried out in the comfort of an air conditioned office working
from a desk. The review and approval of the shop drawings is carried out by the Senior
Engineer on site.

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Inspection of Works on Site:

Standard Operating Procedure CS-04-03 (Procedure for Inspection Requests) has been issued
to all the Resident Engineers and either hard copies or soft copies are with the site staff, so all
staff have been made aware of the requirements of this procedure. In fact, the procedure is one
of those that have been in circulation for many years.

There are clearly defined responsibilities and method in the text of the procedure:

1.1 To describe how sections of the works are subject to staged inspections prior to
release for the next stage and, eventually, completion.

4.3 The Resident Engineer and/or Site Engineers are responsible for ensuring that all
inspection activities are performed in accordance with appropriate SDC Inspection
Checklists, Design Drawings, Specifications, BoQs, approved materials and Shop
Drawings.

6.2.2 During the normal course of his day’s work the discipline engineer/inspector should
visit the site and note any items which he feels would result in non-conforming works,
if allowed to remain uncorrected. These should be pointed out to the Contractor’s
engineer at the earliest opportunity to avoid excessive abortive works at a later date.
If necessary, a Site Instruction is written.

In addition to the Standard Operating Procedure CS-04-03 (Procedure for Inspection Requests),
a Site Inspection Manual has been issued to all the Resident Engineers and either hard copies
or soft copies are with the site staff, so all staff have been made aware of the requirements of
this manual. The Site Inspection Manual was put together during early 2012 based on the
forms, etc. that have been in circulation for many years.

The following abstracts from the Introduction section of the Site Inspection Manual clearly
explain the philosophy behind the responsibilities and method of inspections:

1.1 The purpose of this manual is to standardize the level of inspections on the SDC
sites irrespective of which Engineer or Inspector is carrying out the inspection.

1.2.1 It is recognized that there is no ideal system but by using the expertise from the staff
and best practices it is hoped that a practical and useable document will result.

Remember that inspection starts at the inception of construction and ends only with
the final acceptance by the Client.

Proper inspection verifies what has been done as well as what may have been left
out.

Site Engineers and Inspectors are responsible for inspecting all assigned work
activities through examination, surveillance and verification. They are also responsible
for documenting the results of those inspections as they relate to the acceptance
criteria defined in the contract documents.

1.2.2 In order to plan for the inspection the Site Engineer/Inspector should:-

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 Review the applicable contract drawings and specifications

 Review the applicable approved shop drawings and other submittals
 Review the QC inspection instructions and checklists contained in this
manual
 Obtain the necessary tools to perform the inspections
 Identify to the RE or Senior Inspector any questions they may have regarding
the inspections

1.2.3 Whenever possible, Site Engineers/Inspectors shall evaluate the work process, as
well as the final product/installation, for compliance with established acceptance
criteria. Note that the Engineers/Inspectors are the most significant force witnessing
the jobsite activities on a daily basis, representing the Owner’s and SDC’s interest.

The Site Engineer/Inspector shall perform inspections on in-process and completed

installations in accordance with applicable contract documents, approved contract
submittals and QC inspection instructions.

1.2.4 Site Engineers/Inspectors will have five basic interfaces during their day-to-day work
assignments.

A. Resident Engineer

The Site Engineers/Inspectors will receive their day-to-day work assignments and will
report on their day’s activities to the RE.

SDC’s methodology for inspections is designed to assist to the smooth functioning of

the whole inspection process.

The current practice that appears to be in common use across the sites is not as
described above. The SDC Inspectors/Engineers are responding to the contractor’s
Inspection Requests and generally in the time required to meet the contractor’s schedule
but they are not carrying out the staged or continuous surveillance inspections – they
are reactive rather than pro active.

A pro active approach has the following advantages:

 Reduces the last minute remedial works to prepare the works for final
acceptance, which invariably are not done
 Allows errors to be picked up and corrected in time
 Creates less friction between the Engineer/Inspector and the contractor’s staff
 Flattens out the peaks and troughs of the inspection process, allowing periods
of relative inactivity to be used for pre-inspections

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Administering the Contract:

Although it is the contractor’s responsibility to determine the means and method of construction,
the Resident Engineer and his staff should review and comment on them wherever the end
result will not be as per the contract documents or safe, etc. The Resident Engineer has a
professional and moral obligation to instruct work to be stopped until the conditions are
corrected.

In order to succeed at these tasks a Resident Engineer requires mature judgment and this is
something that cannot be taught in a classroom but is acquired by experiencing all the stages
from setting out, inspections, preparation of shop drawings, knowing materials field tests,
understanding problems of the tradesmen, knowing the language of construction. The RE must
call in expert advice when required where he lacks the relevant experience or knowledge, and
not simpler blunder through.

RE must also interpret the plans and specifications with fairness

RE must be able to direct, supervise and motivate field engineering personnel

RE must be able to coordinate, plan and organize work.

RE must be able to communicate effectively both orally & in writing.

What Changes are needed to be made?

Introduction

The Construction Supervision Department Management has established Standard Operating

Procedures, Inspection Manuals and Technical Guide Notes and has distributed them to all the
sites through the Resident Engineers and Area Managers. These are, thus, available to all staff.
The sites have been given the management tools with which to fulfill the requirements of the
Construction Supervision Services.

After being given the tools to do the tasks and the technical back-up, the Site teams must be
their own driving force in order to fulfill the Construction Supervision Services.

NOTE: It is imperative that ALL staff members realize that they are responsible for their
actions on site and will be made accountable for not complying with the new and
existing requirements.

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Division of Work Load

Although the contractor does generate activities for the site team through the Inspection
Requests or Monthly Evaluations, the majority of all routine site supervision needs to be carried
out by the site engineers acting on their own initiative. In order to do this, the Resident Engineer
must establish local site procedures for regular inspections and encourage his staff to maintain
a close watch on the contractor.

All discipline engineers must not only be willing to perform tasks that would normally be
performed by a junior but must overlap with other disciplines and not work on strict lines of
demarcation. This needs to be developed by the RE, and simply means that each discipline
engineer must be aware (not necessarily well versed in) of the existence of the other trades and
the likely activities. For example, the civil engineer needs to be aware that there may be
electrical conduits to be embedded in the concrete or openings for mechanical services or
sleeves for mechanical pipes through water retaining walls need to have puddle flanges or
curtain wall cladding requires inserts to be cast in.

The nature and sequence of construction activities on site dictates that it is the civil/structural
engineer who tends to take the lead role in this co-ordination process, however the other
disciplines need to play their part and be aware of the progress of construction to avoid items
being missed or positioned incorrectly.

Role of the Resident Engineer

The Resident Engineer’s main task, therefore, is to provide the leadership which will make the
team effective. A good RE will be unmistakably in charge of his team whilst recognizing that he
cannot be an expert on everything; he will keep everybody informed fully informed about what is
going on but without stifling the initiative with too many instructions; he will work hard to ensure
that each team member feels useful and busy. If the RE finds a mistake then the person on the
team should be told and allowed to correct it himself.

The Construction Supervisor’s role should not be seen as a passive and negative one. Effective
Construction Supervision requires more involvement from the SDC staff than merely reacting to
the actions and initiatives of the contractor. An effective Construction Supervision process
operates in four ways:

 Troubleshooting – a continuous activity in which the RE’s team use their

knowledge of the site and design to anticipate problems and warn against them.
It is a positive approach, but is not an exhaustive check or an insurance policy for
the contractor to be passive.
 Overseeing the execution of the works to ensure the proper methods are used.
Constant supervision and use of their own experience and knowledge to check
the contractor’s workmanship against accepted construction practices.

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 Checking compliance with the standards of performance identified in the

specifications, e.g. through testing or through areas offered for inspections.
 Approval and monitoring of the contractor’s proposals, e.g. methods of working
or material samples or samples such as concrete panels for finishes, which are
used as yardsticks to measure the final works.

Wherever possible sites should always be staffed with best people available – high quality
people are much more productive. The RE’s staff needs to be doers who can accomplish
multiple tasks with little or no guidance. Also the site staff should be a team of people who can
work together.

To improve the effectiveness of the site team it must be provided with adequate staff such as:

 Document Control to handle bulk of the paperwork

 Sufficient numbers of competent engineers/inspectors to verify works
progressing in accordance with the QC plan etc.

The Resident Engineer is the prime mover on a site and with competent, knowledgeable and
experienced staff he can anticipate problems before they occur and discuss with the contractor
and agree on solutions. He should study the contract documents and advise his engineers and
inspectors of what is expected from the contractor and them. He should also establish a set of
standards to be adopted by all his staff. The Resident Engineer should not set himself up as the
judge and jury and criticize the contractor for not taking up his suggestions – a good RE
assumes as many duties as his authority permits.

A good RE and his staff should be sufficiently aware of the construction processes as they are
in a position to notify the contractor that the work that is under construction would not be
approved instead of waiting until completion.

The Resident Engineer needs to function as an Administrator, Communicator, Supervisor,

Coordinator, Scheduler and Manager. In order to improve the effectiveness of the RE he needs
to:

 Have been more involved in the preparation of the bid documents, and he has to
work with these and deal with all the weaknesses in them.
 Become more involved in the construction process after the contract is bid and
awarded
 Provide the critical interface between design and construction
 Be technically competent and operate with the confidence that comes from
understanding all the pieces.
 Be able to converse with engineers from all disciplines to resolve problems and
to anticipate problems before they arise
 Want the responsibility of the job – the buck stops with the RE

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 Have people skills to be able to motivate, counsel and direct the human
resources.
 Develop a team attitude in the staff
 Display decisive leadership
 Maintain diplomacy and tact in resolving issues among the Project Team
 Expect results and make commitments he expects to honour

Reporting

Reporting is a vital part of the Construction Supervision services in order to have documentation
for handing over and for recording the historical events throughout the construction process.
The various types of reporting (daily, weekly & monthly) have been discussed earlier. The
weekly and monthly reports are sufficient to fulfill the needs as long as they are produced; the
daily report is to be changed to follow the format of revised form F-CS13 (attached). However,
there is a danger of loading up the RE and the site team with too much paperwork that they
have no time to visit the site for formal and informal inspections and surveillance.

How will these be implemented?

The previous paragraphs clearly define the processes that need to be performed under the
scope of Construction Supervision Services at sites. It is also clear that the site teams have
been instructed on the services to be performed and given the tools with which to complete the
tasks.

Despite all the intentions and tools to perform the Construction Supervision Services not all sites
are implementing the full services. There could be several reasons for this, such as:

 Sites are ignoring the procedures

 The staff are incapable of fulfilling the tasks due to inexperience or lack of knowledge
 The staff are incapable of fulfilling the tasks due to inadequate manning and time
available
 The Resident Engineer is not managing the site team and allowing them to do what they
want rather what is needed to be done
 The Resident Engineer is being ignored by the site team, yet not reporting this back to
the main office

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Suggested Methods

Visit from Main Office to all Sites

During April 2012, the sites were visited by Construction Supervision Department Technical
Manager to roll out the new Procedures. There needs to be a similar series of visits to all the
sites as follow-up.

However, during the follow-up visits the Resident Engineer and his staff will do the talking – they
will be asked to describe how they carry out the Construction Supervision Services, including
demonstrating the use of forms. During the presentation by the RE and the engineers, questions
will be asked for clarification to demonstrate that each staff member is fully aware of the
processes.

The advantages of this will be that any issues that are not fully understood by the site staff can
be raised with the Technical Manager and the Technical Manager will be able to assess the
Resident Engineer and his staff. The ability of the staff can be appraised at the same time and
be fed back to the HR department to make recommended improvements through training or re-
assignments or promotion.

Periodic Meetings of all Resident Engineers

Healthy competition is good for bringing out the best efforts of staff. On a biweekly or monthly
basis the Resident Engineers only, or their designate in the absence of the RE, will meet the
Construction Supervision Management in either the Riyadh or Jeddah Office, dependent upon
location of the site.

The intention of the meeting is to have the Resident Engineers make a presentation of their
project that will include, as a minimum, the following;

 Progress since the previous meeting

 Problems encountered and solutions
 Problems encountered where a solution is needed
 Design issues
 Manning issues
 Financial issues

Putting the Resident Engineer on the spot will mean that he will have to sharpen up his act. This
increased need to be fully conversant with the project should create a downward ripple where
the engineers on the project will also need to be sharper in order to be able to brief the RE.

The exercise will also be useful practice for the Resident Engineer in giving presentations and to
be able to think on his feet when having to answer questions.

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 Improvements to Construction Supervision Services

Audits of Sites by Technical teams to assess Staff

Under the ISO 9001 system Diyar has had Bureau Veritas train and certify selected members of
its staff to perform Internal Audits on the Quality Management System. A similar scheme needs
to be instigated where selected engineers from various disciplines are trained to carry out audits
of the sites covering the practical aspects of the implementation of the Construction Supervision
Services.

For example: the Internal Audit will verify that the works are inspected on site by checking the
logs of the inspection requests (IRs) and carrying out spot checks to the IR file to see that the
information, dates, signatures, follow-up revision numbering, etc. are all correct. What the
proposed audit will do is have an auditor shadow the engineer/inspector in order to witness how
the inspection is carried out, whether all aspects are covered under the inspection, whether the
engineer/inspector is demonstrating that he has the knowledge and experience to perform the
inspection, whether the output of the inspection is protecting the Client’s & Diyar’s interests and
is not damaging the contractor either money-wise or schedule-wise.

Simultaneously, the time spent performing inspections will give feedback as to whether the site
team will be capable of meeting the contractor’s schedule with the available manning.

The ability of the staff can be appraised at the same time and be fed back to the HR department
to make recommended improvements through training or re-assignments or promotion.

Multiple Daily Walks around Sites

Multiple daily walks around the site are required to be carried under the existing procedures
and, quite frankly, something that a responsible engineer should not even need reminding
about.

The site engineer is obligated to carry out the daily tours, but the Resident Engineer and the
senior discipline Engineers also need to allocate time in their daily routines to this task. The
benefits to each or the consequences of not carrying out the task need to be explained
otherwise it will become low priority and not done.

The method for confirmation that the site tours are taking place is needed, and this could be by
including comments on the Observations section on the Daily Site Report (F-CS13).

Daily Reports

Daily reports are a must under the existing procedures. The daily reports submitted by the
individual are for the use of the Resident Engineer and need to be kept at the site, in order for
him to compile the monthly report for Management. It the Resident Engineer as the manager of
his site team that needs to be made the responsible entity for ensuring this task is performed – it
is for his benefit. Assuming 100 engineers throughout the sites and each sending a daily report

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to the main office, then it will take one person a full day to read them all. In addition, if reports
are not submitted it is an extra task on the main office personnel to chase.

A daily report from the Resident Engineer that has been compiled from individual reports from
the site team (F-CS13) sent to the main office for review is a much more manageable task. It
also puts the RE in the driving seat for all activities on the site.

Orientation Courses for newly Recruited Staff

The taking on of new staff is a lottery, especially when it is based on a short interview, unless
the candidate is known to the company or somebody who works in the company. Many
candidates have enough knowledge to get through the interview but not enough experience to
sustain them through the actual job requirements.

Candidates are often recruited because there is an immediate shortage which means that they
are often thrown in at the deep end. The staff on site will often be too busy with their own tasks
to guide and/or teach the new recruit, so the new recruit struggles through. In many cases he
will survive and not much damage will be done to the company’s reputation, in other cases he
will struggle to the detriment of the company.

It is far better to bring all new recruits up to a minimum standard and awareness of the Diyar
system by putting them through an orientation course on the procedures and systems used
within Diyar.

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 Daily Site Report
Project Title and No. Report No.

Name of Diyar Staff: Date:

Activities Performed (Inspections/Submittals Review/Contractor Queries, etc.)

Observations on Labor/Materials/Plant/Equipment/Submittals

Diyar's Engineer Resident Engineer

F-CS13/B