Investigation of current practice in preconstruction planning

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate current practice in preconstruction planning. Eleven semi-structured interviews were conducted over a four-month period. Through these interviews, two major findings were revealed: first, guesses are frequently made in preconstruction planning process, neither the initial planner nor the downstream planner will later check. They're usually ignored and left until the execution of the plan, when the problems reveal themselves. Secondly, the current techniques for the management of preconstruction planning, such as the critical path method and bar charts, cannot account for the iterative nature of the preconstruction planning process that requires estimations to be made and work to be redone until a satisfactory solution is developed. This paper argues the importance of effective management of information flow in a preconstruction planning process and the need to improve the management of preconstruction planning. A proposed approach using a dependency structure matrix tool to support the management of preconstruction planning was then introduced.