Construction Management Guide

By Jim Delkousis

The UAE has seen a major slowdown of construction projects in recent months, particularly in Dubai. The situation is far from being ideal for players in the construction market.

Trapped with stagnating projects, developers and contractors are facing a recurrent question. What can we do when a project is frozen? Do we take drastic measures such as cancellation of the project? Or shall we wait until conditions improve? [Read more...]

Salaries of engineers have fallen by 15 per cent as construction companies reconsider their budgets, said experts.
“The salaries of civil engineers in the country have fallen by 15 per cent for new hires. It’s not like six months back when engineers in the construction sector got a 50 per cent hike when they switched jobs,” said Ian Giulianotti, Associate Director, HRM Consulting, at Nadia Recruitment. [Read more...]

by Sadek Owainati

[More Images] Engineering is mainly classified as an ‘applied science’ subject, but more often than not, engineers are asked to produce ‘innovative designs’ and propose ‘creative solutions’. This suggests that engineers need to be both scientists and artists. [Read more...]

by Anthony Edwards

 In May, Construction Week reported the UAE’s plan to finalise a new arbitration law, and highlighted various criticisms of the current draft. One contributor was quoted saying that “The point (in arbitration)…is beaten if things get complicated”. Review of the current draft suggests that the criticism reported in May could hardly have abated. [Read more...]

Written by Ron Holohan    

As a project manager, you are responsible for managing the efforts of your team to insure that your project deliverables are met.  But how do you manage one of your most important project stakeholders – your own manager? [Read more...]

Written by Josh Nankivel    

Meetings.  Meetings.  Meetings. The end of another week.  I didn’t get the design finished like I had wanted to this week.  It just seems like there is so much to do, and so little time! This has been happening a lot lately.  What is going on here?  Why am I not getting things done? [Read more...]

by Nick Carnell

Nick Carnell, partner, Kennedys, believes it should be easier for parties to resolve disputes outside of the courts after launching proceedings. [Read more...]

The following techniques can be used at the project level or activity level, or for any sized work in-between. [Read more...]

If you look at a WBS activity and determine that it needs to be broken down to another level, the original activity becomes known as a “summary” level. A summary activity does not have any work or hours specifically associated with it. It represents a logical roll-up of the activities that are under it. [Read more...]

One way to supplement quantifiable metrics is with client satisfaction surveys. For instance, instead of trying to measure the exact response time of an application against some service-level standard, you could simply ask your main users how satisfied they were with the application response time. [Read more...]