What is Construction planning?

The word construction planning consists of two terms that is construction and planning, where by each term
has its own definition.
Construction means, process of constructing an infrastructure or a building. But the term construction
differs from manufacturing since it involves mass production of similar items without a designated
purchaser.
Planning means, act of researching, analyzing anticipating and influencing change in our society. It
involves creation and maintenance of a plan.
Construction planning requires the detailed consideration to form the works, so that management can
derive the following;

 The total contract period, necessary for determining the organizational overhead costs which
will be expended in undertaking the works.
 The labor requirements including breakdown of skills, size of gangs and ratio of trade
operatives to general operatives.
 The requirements for materials and components, including delivery schedules, handling and
storage.
 The requirements for plant and equipment, including breakdown of type, capacity, utilization,
servicing, and attendance or stand-by labor.

The following are the basic concept in the development of construction plan

Construction method, in the development of construction plan selection of appropriate method for
construction is very significant for any successful construction project. For example, selecting whether you
will use only labor force or machinery as the method of undertaking your construction project. But before
selecting any among the method, the following should be considered such as cost, time, resources,
transportation and how these methods are going to be suitable for the construction project.

In making a choice of which method should be used the construction project, it’s necessary to formulate
several construction plans based on assumptions, when the whole plan is ready then time, cost and
resources can be reviewed.

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Also using suitable method, it stimulates the construction method, it can be in planner’s mind or any other
stimulation technique such as computer use. For example, when a planner used computer aid design as
the method in designing his construction project, this will ease the planner’s imagination to be portrayed, as
it seems.

Set of related works (sequence), while selecting the general method to be used, at the same time
defining the set of related works in considered in planning process, so that various works to be
accomplished. These work simply the work of scheduling of construction works and estimating the
resources to be used by individual tasks.

The task of defining appropriate set of related work can be tough and tedious procedure but it presents very
significant information for application of formal scheduling process. This can be expensive and time
consuming since it involves large number of individual tasks, but since there can be repetitions of works
during construction process planning can be used as general.

In defining the set of related work tasks, appropriate way will depend on the size of the project, how difficult
the project is, and accounting process, which is used, but defining tasks playing a role of scheduling,
construction monitoring, and communicating the construction plan.

Identifying relationship among labor, after determining individual works, then the relationship among
workers will be easily specified. Several activities in construction projects take place due to coordination
that exist among workers of a particular construction project. For example, before undergoing a
construction project, a drawing must be crosschecked by architects and other engineer, then the quantity
surveyor makes its cost then the contractor transforms the drawing to the actual building.

So during construction planning, its significant to have an imagination on how the workers of the particular
construction project are going to cooperate so as the project can be successfully accomplished.

Estimating plants, equipment and resources to be used, when the relationship among workers is
identified, then it is significant to estimate on the equipment, plants and resources that are going to execute
the particular construction project. Resources are estimated in each activity that is going to take to take a
place during construction.

Since the activities identified are comprehensive, then the total resources required for the particular project

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are the some of the resources required for the various activities. And the first problem in estimating the
resources required is to decide the number of recourses that might be large. For example, when the actual
expenditure exceeded the estimated expenditure of a particular project, where by large amount of money
can be lost at very early stage of the construction process.

Estimating the duration of the project, after identifying all the above basic concept of developing the
construction then it’s also very important to estimate the time that the construction process is going to take
place to be successfully accomplished.

In most of scheduling procedures, each activity has its own time to be accomplished, and each duration of
activity to be accomplished are extensively used in preparation of schedule. A good way to estimate activity
duration for construction purposes is to keep historical records of particular activities and rely on the
average time from this experience in making new duration estimates.

Despite the fact that above are the basic concepts of developing the construction planning, but construction
planning also has two major concepts, which are programing of the work and monitoring the progress and
controlling the construction work.

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REFERENCES

 Frederick S. Merritt and Jonathan T. Ricketts, Building design and Construction Handbook, Sixth
Edition,
 Olli IIveskoski and Seppo Niittymaki, Construction management, Hame university of applied
science and authors. Hameenlinna, January, 2015
 Google/chrome-extension://mhjfbmdgcfjbbpaeojofohoefgiehjai/index.html