In capital projects, increasing workfront availability ensures faster execution of construction work and faster completion of the project itself. For work to proceed in a specific area of a construction site, all necessary preconditions must be met,a concept known as work front availability Today let’s explore how to increase workfront availability.
Key Items for Work Front Availability
- Engineering Drawing and Statutory Approvals: Availability of approved design and construction drawings and required approvals of permits from regulators.
- Material for Construction: Ensure all necessary materials and supplies are on-site or scheduled for delivery.
- Manpower and Machinery Resources: Ensure necessary labor, equipment, and tools are ready and available.
- Completion of Prior Work: Ensure previous construction activities, which are prerequisites for the next phase, are completed.
- Access to the Site: Maintain clear and safe access routes for workers, equipment, and materials.
- Site Preparation: Ensure the site is cleared, leveled, and prepared for construction.
- Safety Measures: Ensure safety measures and protocols for safe working environment.
Strategies to Achieve Maximum Workfront
First let’s consider all the steps you’d have to take: you’d start with a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) which breaks the project down into smaller tasks and phases and a project schedule that outlines the sequence of activities and their dependencies.
Under Resource Planning you would identify and allocate labor, equipment, materials for each of the tasks; for example, you’d make a detailed engineering plan that included all engineering deliverables, dependencies, and milestones. You’d pinpoint tasks that influence the overall project timeline so that you could prioritise their completion.
You’d check that the required labor, equipment, and tools were available on site when needed and that all the equipment was in good working condition.
You would make sure the site was properly cleared and levelled, that the temporary storage and facilities had been set up, and that there was some system to track material inventory and equipment availability.
You’d make a procurement schedule which laid out all required materials, equipment, and services and the quantities and specifications, and the procurement schedule would have to align with the project timeline and work breakdown structure.
For the pre-work, you’d break down the detailed construction tasks and sequences to understand the dependencies and resource needs, then you’d develop a comprehensive project schedule for all activities, milestones, and critical paths, and then you might use some critical path methods to identify the tasks that influence the overall project timeline (so you could prioritize their completion) and then you’d have to monitor their progress to make sure they get completed on time and to the required quality standards while addressing any issues or delays in prior work promptly to prevent cascading effects on subsequent tasks.
For the safety measures you’d implement safety protocols to ensure a safe working environment, like conducting regular safety inspections and briefings, and in the same spirit you’d likely set up Communication and Coordination mechanisms across the teams to maintain a stream of clear and continuous communication among all the project stakeholders.
Well – that’s a lot!
On paper, that’s the minimum of what you’d need to do to improve the availability of your workfronts – but in real life is it realistically achievable? And could you pull it off without a big team of expensive and experienced managers? The answer is yes, if you had an integrated digital solution.
Digital Systems to Maximise Workfront:
There are many EPC-oriented software options on the market today, from traditional project management software to engineering-specific EDMS to cloud-based collaboration platforms and the like, but the most effective are the newer integrated systems that tie together the functions of planning, scheduling, resource management, and communication and help ensure that work fronts are ready when needed.
Such a solution would include the typical slew of project management features, like project planning and scheduling capabilities which help create detailed work breakdown structures, assign resources, track progress, and identify potential bottlenecks.
Ideally the system would integrate with building information modeling (BIM) to allow for detailed 3D modeling of construction projects, which would help plan the sequence of construction activities, identify potential clashes, and ensure all elements are in place before starting a new task.
An integrated system would also include a cloud-based Collaboration Platform to facilitate communication and collaboration among project stakeholders. This would help with real-time updates, document sharing, and issue tracking, thereby making sure everyone is informed and on the same page at all times during the project’s lifecycle.
Supply Chain Management Systems and Material Tracking Systems would help in managing the procurement and delivery of materials and the more advanced construction management software have such features built in, like E-tendering capabilities to track the pre-order and post-order stages of procurement.
The ideal system would even have some built in Field Management Tools like a mobile app that allows field teams to update progress, report issues, and access project information from the job site – so that you could promptly address any issues that might impact work front availability.
In short, a modern integrated digital platform that combines the benefits of project management, SCM, BIM, and field management and that will help maximise workfront availability.
But it doesn’t stop there!
Consider how an integrated system would help with Problem Solving, like with proactive identification and resolution of potential issues related to workfront availability and how that would help avoid delays and keep the project on schedule. Or take Risk Management – such an integrated system would identify potential procurement risks, such as supply chain disruptions or price volatility, and help you build contingency plans and other ways to mitigate risk.
In fact with an integrated digital platform you could have multiple work fronts executed simultaneously by different teams on various tasks, and that would allow for parallel execution – which would reduce the overall project timeline.
To sum up, an Integrated digital platform maximises workfront availability in a way that would be impossible to achieve otherwise, and by maximising workfront availability you would be able to maintain project schedules, optimize resource utilization, and reduce delays caused by unprepared or inaccessible work areas.