Decisions made on construction sites

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.