EFFECTS OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES ON PROJECTS SCHEDULES

EFFECT OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES ON PROJECT SCHEDULE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

• Background of the study

The project schedule is the tool that communicates what work needs to be performed, which resources of the organization will perform the work and the timeframes in which that work needs to be performed. The project schedule should reflect all of the work associated with delivering the project on time.

Project schedules are invariably dynamic and uncertain. Various controllable and uncontrollable factors can adversely affect the project schedule and cause delays. As a result, the identification and analysis of delays become essential Finke 1999. They are however, onerous tasks. Contractors are prone to view most delays as the responsibility of the owner while owners frequently attempt to tag delays as contractor caused, third party caused, or concurrent Zack 2001. Consequently, delays may lead to some form of dispute resolution alternatives, from negotiation to litigation, which may be expensive and a crapshoot. Responding to such challenge, the industry has created and employed many schedule analysis techniques. The level of acceptability of each technique depends on its credibility and the court or board ruling the corresponding delay claims. However, resource-related issues such as constraints, availability, or in broader term resource allocation can cause delays yet their effects are typically neglected in those techniques. It should be noted that although a number of studies have focused on scheduling with resource allocation e.g., Wiest 1967; Davis 1974; Willis 1985; Fondahl 1991; Bowers 1995; Hegazy 1999; Kim and de la Garza 2003, 2005; Chua and Shen 2005, none of them addressed resource allocation in “after-the-fact” schedule delay analysis.

Resource management techniques also include planning, organizing, directing and controlling activities in addition to motivating team members, which is usually the most expensive resources on the project, (Harvey, 2002). There are two basic planning and control technique utilized in project management. These are Programme Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) and Critical Path Method (CPM). These techniques involve the combination of interrelated activities that must be executed in a certain order for its completion. These interrelated activities involve planning; scheduling and controlling (Clifford and Erik, 2003). These techniques are used in construction industry

1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT

The resource management techniques on project schedule in construction industry can be considered as a dynamic engineering which is constantly facing uncertainties. These uncertainties and the many stakeholders in these kinds of projects, make the management of resouce difficult which consequently causes cost overruns and project delay. Therefore, project delivery and cost overruns are considered one of the most critical issues during the execution of construction projects (Chan, et al., 2004; Doloi, 2011).

As mentioned by Van Der Westhuizen and Fitzgerald (2005), the presence of cost overruns can be a reason for project delays or possible project failures.

EFFECT OF RESOURCE MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES ON PROJECT SCHEDULE