The 5 Phases of a Construction Project, PM Principles and Tips #24

hi i'm tom stevenson and welcome to construction project management principles today we're going to be talking about the five phases of a construction project what's involved in the life cycle of a typical construction project so when we think about the five phases of a construction project we have initiating planning executing monitoring and control and closeout these are the five phases and if we want to sort of look at it in a graphical form we can think about it this way we we start the project we have initiation we've we've won the project and we're going

to be starting it up we have project planning that's the phase where we're planning what we're going to do and how we're going to do it hopefully we do that pretty well then we're going to execute the plan so we're actually running the project monitoring the project and you'll see in a minute how this these four here interact and these should all be leading to project closeout so let's start at the beginning here we have pre-construction we call that early phase before you're actually starting to you know excavate in the ground get things delivered and

installed uh we call that all pre-construction so hence we have pre-construction planning and in that planning phase we are establishing a baseline for our schedule and a budget right so we get a baseline schedule and a budget schedule we have two things that we are um doing the baseline for the budget and the schedule that's so that we can measure and compare so we have a plan and we'll be able to measure what the plan was as things change and believe me in the world of construction things change nothing ever goes exactly to plan but

that's okay that is why we do this process this way so we start out and if we put in good effort early in the cycle we get a lot of rewards later on we call that proactive management where you're actively looking ahead you're not waiting for things to happen to you you're planning ahead so you can make things happen and that's very good but we're under a lot of incentive in construction to actually just start and show things that we're doing but that doesn't help if we have to redo things so we want to be

very cognizant of that we start the project so we planned it we've got it all planned out we've figured out you know the schedule step by step what we want to do how we want to do it we budget it and the budget comes from the estimate that you made that allowed you to get the project so you're breaking that up into various costs so that you can check how you're doing as you proceed compared to the baseline so then you're starting the project and it should be this feedback loop because as i said nothing

goes the way you plan planning is a dynamic item so these this is not linear that's what everybody thinks it's linear but it's more iterative back and forth so we're planning we're executing the plan so the execution of the plan we're implementing it and we should be seeing how are we doing there's this rotating circle that occurs here how are we doing and that's what the monitoring is it's checking how are we doing compared to our baseline budget and our baseline schedule is there something we can learn from this and the better we are at

this the quicker we're learning there's traditional ways that we do things in construction and a lot of those traditional ways they're giving way to other ways of doing things or combining with other ways of doing things so with the baseline schedule that's great we develop what we call a critical path the steps of how we're going to do the project but we've got to find ways that we get feedback quickly so we can pivot we can adjust we can iterate and re-plan something delays us we've got to adjust it maybe we still want to finish

on the same date we've got to adjust our schedule going forward so these are things that continuously goes round and round here as you are building the project so this is this cycle that's continuously rotating we did something we planned out the week ahead we checked daily to see how we're doing we're adjusting as we move through this we're going to be headed towards the last stage of project closeout now what i didn't say is that in the planning process we should be planning how to close out the project we don't wait till we get

here to start figuring out how we're going to close out the project we started here and that means we fix as many deficiencies as possible in this cycle we don't wait and have a gazillion deficiencies also known as a punch list that we have to deal with at the end of the project we're proactively planning we're not getting here and then reactively responding to all the mess that we created in the project planning process we also plan out commissioning commissioning is the testing of all of the building systems to make sure that they're functioning the

way that they were designed to function very often there might be a third party commissioning agent for larger projects that the client has and they're going to be checking things but you want to find out exactly what their expectations are and have clarity on that so that when you get here it actually becomes much easier to close out the project the closing of the project should take like around 10 of your time and effort shouldn't be taking like 30 of your time and effort the big portion of time and effort is coming through here but

your planning cycle is very important too and as i said it is a dynamic cycle so it's ongoing and iterative now if we do this you know we're really reducing the amount of reactive management that we have to do now i'm not going to say that you're not going to have to react to things construction is a very complex industry where buildings are very complex and there's always things that are going to happen that you didn't expect expect like black swan events unknown unknowns but we don't want to be reacting to things that we should

have saw coming we should have had contingencies for so that we can adjust when they happen we've already got something that we can deal with it because when you are in reactive mode you don't have time to replan the work and that puts you in this vicious circle of reacting all the time and that's not a good thing in construction we want to be proactive we want to have a good plan to start with we're going to have to adjust it many many many times over but we can compare to our baseline and see how

we're doing and if we're documenting it well we can learn going forward in future projects so we do that and we do that with continuous communication with each other between the gc the consultants the trade partners the authorities having jurisdiction and of course the client that will be very helpful for us and our success especially if we do it in a way that we engage them throughout the project updating and monitoring so we have to update to see where we are monitoring revising so we have revisions and recoveries that we're doing in here and with

the replanting of the work so once we have it updated then we're re-planning the work we're doing revisions and recoveries to get us back on track that's going to lead to control that's going to lead to success so this is the five stages of the project management life cycle and if we do all of these things well it's going to be very helpful i have just a couple of other points that i'm going to add to this because this is something i'll talk about in some other videos it really is seven phases when you think

about it number one is well we got to get the project so there really is an earlier phase to this but often we don't get past this phase because we don't get awarded the project our price is too high or something's not standing up to the rfp points process so we might not get that but when we do then it's going to lead to the other five and then if we do the other five really good you know what then post construction services there might be maintenance contracts that you can get out of this you

might have client that client might want more work you might not have so much difficulty getting the next project because that client sees you as the preferred contractor which is really good if we think about the whole thing it really is a lot of stuff involved right pre-construction construction close out and all of these elements that we talk about in this video series and on my youtube channel we get into a lot of detail on this so if you're looking for more information on how construction projects are run and how to manage them effectively you're

looking for things like how microsoft project scheduling software looks like please subscribe check out my playlist and make comments join the community as we build this community together so i'm tom stevenson wishing you a wonderful day and don't forget click subscribe and we'll see you next time bye for now