Running a construction project without professional construction management is outright reckless. First of all, professional construction management makes the project more effective. It also reduces delays or incorporates them in plans/schedules more effectively. Construction management improves communication amongst involved parties, which, seeing as how many involved parties there are, really makes a world of difference.
Apart from this, safety is one of the biggest issues in construction, and proper construction management can really make a world of difference here. Keep in mind that it also avoids disputes, which is a service that you will need quite often when considering how many subcontractors and interested parties intertwine on these projects.
Still, in order to realize all of these benefits, what you need is to choose the right construction management service. Here are a couple of pointers on how to make your decision-making process more efficient.
What Services Are They Offering?
The biggest mistake that you can make is to make presumptions before doing any research. For instance, you read about the definition of construction management service and see the list of services that they offer. Then, you find a random construction management service and assume that they offer all of these services as well. Is this always wrong? Of course not, but there’s no guarantee.
The basic breakdown of the services that they should offer is that they should guide the project through all its stages. This means that they should manage the team, assemble a design, engineering, and architectural team, evaluate all the contractors, and negotiate with suppliers.
Developing a plan for a large project is never a simple thing, which is why you need to ensure that they are great at communication and reporting. You want to have this plan in writing, and no number of affirmative phrases or verbal reassurance on their part should do the trick. Keep in mind that this plan needs to have a wide level of flexibility to it.
Once you’ve checked whether they provide all the basic services, you should shift your focus towards the extra services in question. Document management, construction activity oversight, vendor communication, etc., are just some of these additional services that are worth your while.
Just make sure that you understand that you won’t get everything. So, make a priority list of these services and make sure that you are ready to make a compromise (where you can).
Look at Your Own Responsibilities
Even if you pick the best construction management service out there, you’re still going to have your own share of responsibilities. While it does involve delegating some of your tasks to someone else, it doesn’t mean that you no longer have anything to worry about. You need to know how often you’ll get the reports in question and what kind of communication with the service you can actually expect to encounter.
The only two ways to figure this one out is to ask directly and talk to someone who already had such a collaboration. Just remember that the construction industry is a lot less predictable than you would expect, which means that prior experiences don’t necessarily translate to your own case.
Also, keep in mind that the amount of involvement often depends on your own choice. While you are hiring intermediaries to reduce some of your responsibilities, no one is going to restrict your access or withhold the knowledge that you’re entitled to. In other words, how much you’re going to be involved sometimes depends on how much you actually want to be involved.
Communication channels are also an important factor here. You can only expect so many meetings with the company without being accused of not trusting them or disrupting their work. However, in the digital era of today, you can easily send an instant message whenever you feel like it.
Things to Insist On
During the negotiations, there are a couple of things you definitely need to insist on. First, you want to make sure that the transparency is at an all-time high. Reporting needs to be available both systemically and on-demand. Seeing as how modern construction management service agencies are already employing cloud-based platforms in their administrative work, this really shouldn’t be an issue.
Second, the question of construction efficiency of any project is also a question of a strict timeline and budget. Being able to complete a project by a given deadline is almost as important as completing the project to begin with. This is especially true in commercial construction. Just imagine a scenario where you need a grain silo constructed by a certain date. Missing this date might mean that you will completely miss the harvest season, which might defeat the purpose behind the construction to begin with.
Remember that just because timely completion is so important, this doesn’t mean that it will always be honored. So, you need some safeguards and contingency methods when one of these contract clauses is breached. This is why the contract in question needs to be as ironclad as possible.
Third, you want to keep the chain of command as simple as possible. One of the biggest challenges of the construction industry (and construction projects, in general) lies in the fact that there are usually so many subcontractors out there to deal with. What you want is a clear chain of communication, as well as a clear chain of command. This way, the reporting and decision-making are made a lot simpler for everyone.
Liability During Different Stages of Construction and Post-construction
One of the things that people often overlook is the fact that accidents happen before, after, and during construction. Issues arise in different forms and areas, which is why it’s so important that it’s determined ahead of time whose responsibility it is to solve these issues. Also, make sure to specify whether you’re talking about the pre-construction, construction, or post-construction in order to keep things covered on all fronts.
Once again, make sure to have it all in written form. Create an iron-clad contract and make sure that it is examined by a legal team. An ambiguity or unclear phrasing will, in a lot of cases, put the responsibility on the party that composed the contract. So, you need to be extra careful about what you’re signing, as well as what you’re having others sign.
As an entrepreneur or an investor, your main objective is to lower the risk and limit your own liability. Sure, chasing profit sounds right, but a lot of times, the risk will outweigh the potential gain. This is a scenario that you need to make sure to avoid.
Increasing Project Resilience
No, construction managers cannot prevent delays, seeing as how they can’t affect the weather nor magically prevent injuries and equipment malfunctions. On the other hand, they can do a better job at foreseeing these delays or giving more flexibility to your schedule so that the delay doesn’t cause a major problem.
A good project manager also ensures that the project always stays on budget. When you take into consideration the fact that a lot of projects fail because they run out of money, you’ll see just how big of an issue this actually is. So, one of the biggest questions you need to ask about the agency managing the project is – how good they are with numbers. Still, this has as much to do with your accounting partners as anything else.
Quality control is about more than just the end result. In construction, every stage follows the next one. A hiccup in the previous stage (a collapse or a miscalculation) will cause further delay and compromise the results of the end result.
Research the Agency
The next thing you want to do is research their agency a bit. First, go to their website and social media profiles in order to get a first impression. Then, reach out to them to form your own impression. Communication sends strange energy, and you may just click with the person on the other end of the line. If you feel like things are not going to work, sometimes it’s for the best to just trust your intuition.
Next, try looking at their track record. Have they participated in projects similar to yours? If they have, what was the end result like? Try contacting those who previously collaborated with them or, at least, look for some testimonials. Keep in mind that while ratings and reviews aren’t 100% reliable, they are a pretty decent indicator of who you’re dealing with.
Then, try looking at their corporate values. Vision, mission, and accomplishments are not there just for show. You see, the right corporate values can show you how they’re handling things and what kind of approach they choose when tackling issues.
Keep in mind that this type of research tends to be quite limited and that there’s no way for you to unearth everything that you’re interested in. Eventually, even with all the research, you’ll have to take a leap of faith and hope that things will turn out for the best. You really can’t know who someone really is until you actually work with them.
In Conclusion
In the end, conducting a construction management service selection is like any other outsourcing. However, it involves extra steps. Due to the peculiarity of the construction industry, your priority list needs to be slightly different. With the above-listed in mind, you should have a much better idea of what you’re looking for.
