2134/19911
Sun-Wah Poon
Sun-Wah
Poon
Andrew Price
Andrew
Price
Decisions made on construction sites
Loughborough University
2015
Construction sites
Decision-making
Hong Kong
Built Environment and Design not elsewhere classified
2015-12-21 09:57:16
Conference contribution
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/conference_contribution/Decisions_made_on_construction_sites/9430964
The decision-making process is critical to the success of any construction project.
Construction personnel have to make decisions on a daily basis and must be able to
justify these decisions. Wrong decisions can be costly in terms of time, quality, cost
and relationships. Effective time-management requires decisions to be assessed in
terms of urgency and importance, and dealt with accordingly.
This paper discusses the results of a survey that was undertaken to investigate the
characteristics of decisions taken on construction sites in Hong Kong. The results
demonstrated that important decisions were mainly concerned with technical,
engineering and financial aspects. Experience and knowledge were found to be the
main contributing factors behind taking decisions. The results also revealed that one
third of decisions were made within an hour and another 40 % were made on the same
day. Most of the important decisions taken had produced satisfactory results but these
could have been improved if more time had been available for collecting relevant
information or acquiring experience. However, over 40 % of these decisions could
have been avoided through adequate preparatory work such as a complete design,
better co-ordination and better planning.