Assessing the management practices for small to medium sized Canadian general contractor organizations
Date
2015
Authors
Rankin, Jeff
Froese, Thomas M.
Issa, Mohamed
Quaigrain, Rhoda
Haas, Carl T.
Nasir, Hassan
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
CSCE International Construction Specialty Conference
Abstract
This paper describes a research study entitled Enhancing the Performance and Productivity of the Canadian Construction Industry through Appropriate Digital Technology Adoption. The study was completed by researchers from four regions across Canada over the period of August 2013 to March 2014. The underlying purpose of the study was to assist in the development of decision-making tools to support the construction industry in the successfully adoption and implementation of new technologies. The study was accomplished by completion of the following steps: (1) an existing framework for the assessment of management practices at the project level for general contractors in the construction industry was refined and extended; (2) a standard assessment tool was developed and administered to 25 small to medium sized commercial/institutional building general contractor organizations, resulting in the identification of potential opportunities for improvement; (3) opportunities for improvement were validated with organizations; and (4) the assessment results were aggregated to provide an initial benchmark of the level of implementation of management practices. The assessment included 117 practices, across nine practice areas, and grouped as planning and control. The aggregated assessment results are indicating that at an industry level, the management practices in need of improvement that relate more directly to digital technologies are becoming clearer and include: Time - better utilization of the capabilities of existing scheduling software; Cost - improve the integration between time management and cost management software; Scope - improve the capture of as-built information and the management of warranty and operation and maintenance information; Quality - capture and categorize rework and non-conforming work; Materials - implement materials tracking and on-site management; and Information and Communication - implement processes to assess the performance of information and communication processes and use structured forms for information capture. The study built on previous work and extended it with respect to gaining insight on practices from the perspectives of the level of implementation and the consistency with which a practice is employed. To further extend this work, partnerships are being developed with national industry organizations to broaden the application of the assessment framework, thereby expanding the benchmarking dataset.
Description
CSCE International Construction Specialty Conference
Keywords
Citation
Rankin, J., Froese, T.M., Issa, M., Quaigrain, R., Haas, C.T. & Nasir, H. (2015). Assessing the management practices for small to medium sized Canadian general contractor organizations. Paper presented at CSCE International Construction Specialty Conference, Vancouver, B.C. https://doi.org/10.14288/1.0076493