Decisions made on construction sites.pdf (46.04 kB)
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conference contribution
posted on 2015-12-21, 09:57 authored by Sun-Wah Poon, Andrew PriceThe 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.
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- Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering