By their very nature, projects involve working with a range of stakeholders, moving parts and unexpected challenges that can often be at odds with each other. For construction project managers, this can be even greater as they coordinate many moving parts, from budgeting and planning, to construction logistics and managing contractors, often while working from a building site.
Construction projects vary in size and scale, but whether you’re working across commercial or residential, many of the same principles apply. Managing on-site risk and being prepared for changes at any moment is even more important these days. Disparities in how projects are managed can lead to inconsistencies with stakeholders, timeline delays, and building errors – or worse.
Follow our 5-step roadmap anytime you are embarking on a new construction project for improved planning, predictability and delivery on budget and on time.
Step 1: Streamline your project planning process
First, outline the key components of a typical project to better understand the resources, budget and time that should be allocated towards it.
- Create cloud-based, mobile-ready templates for outlining key project details, such as a construction and facilities management portal, construction budget and estimator.
- Ensure planning templates are accessible to all stakeholders, clients, and subcontractors who are participating in the project, including the management bodies and individuals involved in implementation.
- Set realistic deadlines and goals for objectives and tasks, and create a construction schedule to track them.
- Outline project budget expectations to ensure budgets are finalised and approved by the client ahead of kick-off, and locked in with suppliers.
Step 2: Strategise on project intake and prioritisation
If you are in a project management function, either in-house or for clients, you may have multiple projects that come your way. If this is the case, you need to be able to determine a consistent way to manage, prioritise, and gain approval on projects – staying on top of the different projects or activities part of an initiative.
- Outline and document steps to prioritise new projects or activities.
- Standardise the project intake process by setting up a project request form that outlines all necessary project details. This is particularly important in the early stages of the project before the build begins.
- Set and formalise project approval standards with key stakeholders, relevant council/industry bodies and clients. See the project intake dashboard template for a bird’s eye view of the health and status of all projects as well as to get notified when new projects are submitted.
Step 3: Plan for on-site, mobile-ready tracking and safety
Safety and risk is always important when it comes to managing construction projects. It’s important to take the right steps to prevent on-site accidents and follow Work Health & Safety Laws. Now, safety is even more paramount. It’s essential to keep track of contractors and subcontractors working on site for any COVIDSafe required documentation, from attendance logs to health declarations.
- Streamline tracking by implementing close-contact reporting procedures using an employee tracing template to capture the details of everyone on site.
- Set up self-assessment and on-site screening protocols for employees and external suppliers or contractors before they enter your site or workplace.
- Document all relevant safety and risk information, and make it visible to relevant team members or stakeholders with real-time transparency.
Step 4: Manage project visibility
Many construction projects have a large amount of stakeholders, particularly when working with clients. To manage this, create one location for project details that allows your team to easily access, manage, and collaborate on tasks, with a real-time view into project status.
- Ensure accountability by creating a tracking report to identify who is responsible for each task and ensure everyone knows their priorities.
- Establish steps for assigning and re-allocating resources, and ensure it’s visible across teams using a construction documentation tracker. If your team members are going away on holidays or other leave, you can track all non-project resourcing updates in a resource management tracker.
- Set up tracking and reporting guidelines to ensure budgets are managed throughout the project, and create a budget tracking report for your team to reference.
Step 5: Take steps to ensure overall team collaboration
Team collaboration is important in any workplace, but especially for construction project managers working with many moving parts. Even small errors can have a large impact on the project’s outcome and teams often include contractors and sub-contractors.
It’s important to put the right collaboration tools in place along with creating a culture of transparency and accountability, with communication at its heart. Collaboration is the bedrock of any project’s success.
- Communication throughout the lifecycle of a project is key, so make sure you have a consistent plan in place that allows for collaboration during every step of the process.
- Ensure stakeholders have a user-friendly place to provide comments and attach feedback within the project plan and throughout execution.
- Set up automated alerts to notify stakeholders when specific deliverables are due, or as project timelines and tasks change.
- Document how teams and PMs should work together to improve collaboration and increase efficiency.
Conclusion
Delivering a successful project or initiative in construction relies upon transparency, compliance, and consistent processes that can be managed, tracked, and repeated by all project managers and stakeholders in the one platform.
Project managers are often the intermediary between clients and stakeholders, as well as workers, suppliers and other construction professionals. To manage a safe, successful construction, they need to make sure all parties have access to the information they need, every step of the way, while staying within budget and meeting deadlines.
Having the right processes not only sets up a project for success but streamlines reviews and evaluations, giving real-time visibility and accountability every single step of the way, in one place and available on mobile – essential for project managers working on site. This is especially important when tackling long-term builds or working with large budgets.
Once you’ve defined the right processes, allow your team to adapt to nuances and take control of their workloads, all with 360-degree visibility to stay ahead of any risks that could hinder the project’s goal. With the right approach, reduce risk, meet deadlines and complete a successful project build.
With Smartsheet – the enterprise platform for dynamic work – you can make the move to more efficient project management today with our 30-day free trial that comes with access to many pre-structured and customisable templates. Streamline your projects by following these best practices to increase consistency, from project initiation to completion.