Construction Management Guide

By Hamish Macdonald
 
In the first place, DABs are not intended to replace arbitration or litigation but are to be considered as part of a multi-tiered dispute resolution process. The use of a DAB has been described as an early and intermediary step directed at avoiding the need to resort to other more expensive and more time-consuming procedures such as arbitration or litigation. [Read more...]

by Antonios Dimitracopoulos

A modernised method of administering arbitration proceedings is set to liberalise the local scene, and make the thought of commencing this popular dispute resolution mode within the construction industry less intimidating than it currently may appear to be. [Read more...]

When you manage the schedule and budget, you normally do not need to be accurate to the minute or to the dollar. You also do not want make all kinds of proactive changes if your project is a day over deadline one week and a day ahead of schedule the next. [Read more...]

It is hard to define product or service quality at a high level because the term “quality” is nebulous and means different things to different people. You must take the time to define the lower-level characteristics of quality for each specific service or deliverable. If you want to ensure that a service or product meets the customer’s expectations of quality, you have to understand the underlying characteristics of quality. [Read more...]

In some procurement contexts, the choice of contract may be determined by external factors, such as requirements of the funder. For example the World Bank now require the FIDIC forms of contract to be used on projects of over £6 million, and it appears as if the NEC form may be the preferred choice for the Olympic construction programme. In such cases the form to be used will have been selected before the Architect and other consultants are appointed. [Read more...]

The process of creating the Project Charter, schedule and budget may take a long time and may be very complicated. Therefore, the work should not be left unorganized, for the same reasons that you are building the schedule for the project to begin with. Immediately after being assigned, the project manager should create a short-term schedule to plan and guide the initial activities. [Read more...]

Projects, especially larger ones, are never executed exactly as they are planned. Some activities finish early. Some finish late. Sometimes it is not easy to know if you are ahead of schedule or behind. Likewise, sometimes it is hard to know whether you are under budget or not. [Read more...]

Effort hours must be estimated first, before duration and cost estimates can be prepared. Use the following process to estimate effort hours.

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by Andrew Gibson

 When I announced at the beginning of this year to colleagues in the UK that I would shortly be relocating to Dubai to specialise in the resolution of construction disputes, most, if not all, imagined the typical contractor/employer type of disputes arising out of defects or delaying events. [Read more...]

Clients who ask us to help them draft forms of guaranteed maximum price (GMP) contracts, have a variety of reasons for their decision to contract on this basis. Fixed price lump sum contracting, they point out, assumes that the design will be more or less complete at the time the contract is signed. [Read more...]