I was driving through this massive construction site in southwest Austin yesterday when the question occurred to me. I am always amazed that a huge project such as this one appears like total chaos during construction yet somehow comes together at the end. This project has huge machines everywhere doing all sorts of things.
So, how does Joe (or Jane) Hardhat know what he is going to do when he shows up for work in the morning? How does he report that he has finished that task and ready for the next thing? How does he end his shift so that the next person knows what remains to be done (or what to do next)? Who checks that the work has been completed properly? Such a project seems like a logistical nightmare. How does this all work?
(The project linked above is the extension of an existing freeway (US290/TX71) through an interchange commonly called “The Y in Oak Hill”. At the wye, 290 and 71 diverge as they leave Austin for points west. This project includes building an all-new interchange with multiple flyovers as well as infrastructure to connect to existing streets. This area has been a traffic nightmare in Austin for decades.
I haven’t been a Joe Hardhat since my early 20s, and I was not a skilled Joe, just a cheap additional-labor Joe. But upon arrival we were to immediately report to a designated physical location where a supervisor delegated responsibilities to us. Then we’d disperse accordingly.
Yeah, they all have supervisors, who also have supervisors. There’s somebody who decides that when Team A finishes whatevering out the whatever, Team B needs to get in there and whatever down the whatever. So the boss of Team B hears from their boss, “starting tomorrow, this is the job.” As the project goes on, they’re all meeting about the progress of various tasks, and the marching orders go down the line.
A lot of them will be somewhat specialized anyway, and so they know that their job on this site is to do this one task, even if it’s only to take a bunch of materials from one place to another. It will often be clear if the site is ready for them to do that one task or not.
I’ve never worked in construction, but I imagine it’s similar to any large business or industry where you have hierarchies of workers and supervisors, on up to a central person or team coordinating everything.
I mean, we’ve been building large things since the time of the pyramids, so we’ve had a lot of practice
As Microsoft Project (or real project management tools) will tell you, any large project can be broken down to smaller projects and steps with individual schedules, goals and milestones, and interdependencies all tied to one another. The tree of management (as mentioned above) follows this progress and makes changes as needed for missed deadlines etc.
Ace Inc will survey and mark the site; Acme Inc will dig the foundation hole. That will take to day X, meanwhile Bob’s trucking will deliver the pilings and on day X the piledriving equipment will arrive.
Once that is done, we have Sam’s woodwork who have 6 crews that can build forms for the concrete foundations, so we assign each one to a certain area. they also do the metal reinforcing rods. That should take 2 days, at which point Roadrunner Cement Services will start to deliver cement. We will need 15 truckloads, and start pouring in the northeast corner, Sam’s people will arrange the pour. Acme by then have taken care of ensuring a gavel roadbase so the truks don’t sink in the mud of fall into the hole… We’ll need a 10-foot trough (thanks, Sam’s) to move the cement from the roadbase to the forms.
And so on…
And so on. Each step is choreographed, particularly if there is nothing novel about the project. Once upon a time Toronto was sprouting 20-storey concrete apartnment towers every day, so there was nothing that was experimental or show-stopping about the process. Details like how long concrete takes to cure before adding more weight are already known.
Most of the people are only really going to have one type of job. A welder isn’t going to be paying concrete tomorrow. They’re going to be welding at a different site.
But yeah, the coordination is a full time discipline and the construction manager is going to be tracking the progress of all the subjobs, rescheduling things when their precursors are behind and all that. An individual technician is going to get to the site already knowing what yeah they have got the day or a supervisor is going to tell them.
Yes, scheduling is critical for projects, and tasks can be broken down into pretty small activities, as well as crew size and composition. The project manager is responsible for allotting tasks to crew leaders, who have access to the schedule and who know what it will take to get the task done in the allotted time. It’s a complicated ballet that, despite appearances, is very well coordinated on a well-run project. It has to be, or the contractor can face delay costs or liquidated damages.
Go into any site office and you will see a Gantt Chart on the wall. Originally analogue, but almost always digital these days, a Gantt Chart is how the site agent and everyone else keeps track of the work.
If you have ever organised a small building project you will know that some things take longer than others, and, most importantly, there is a specific order to do them. Simplistically, you want the underground services done before you build the walls. Gantt invented a way of keeping track visually.
I imagine all the supervisors carry a tablet these days that will show them the progress (or otherwise) of their part of the whole. The guy in a JCB digging a trench, only knows what he is expected to achieve, but his boss needs to know how it fits in to the whole, or at least the part of the project.
Very often you have a general contractor overseeing the project and various subcontractors doing specialized functions. When the project is put for bid, all the subs (carpentry, steel, plumbing, HVAC, etc) bid on their trade and, when awarded, get organized by the general contractor about when to be out there. So, chances are, the HVAC guys on the project only do HVAC and come out when the general says “We need you here doing HVAC in six weeks” and do their part of the scope and that’s it. Some general contractors run their own major trades like structural steel or architectural concrete and others basically sub all of it and mainly manage the project.
Even at the bidding phase, there’s a construction calendar saying approximately when each trade is supposed to come out and do their thing. Of course, it rarely works out that way due to delays but you have a decent idea on when you’re supposed to be on site and what your job is (since you bid that scope).
There are project managers on both the subcontractor and contractor level to organize their work (or organize the various subs) and keep them accountable and make sure different subs aren’t stepping on one another’s toes – gotta run the conduit under the floor before the carpenters shown up and lay flooring.
Just because I had one handy, here’s a snippet from a construction schedule. The column with “486” on top is days allocated for each task:
A good synopsis. Construction is one of those professions where the happiest people on the job are the guys doing the grunt work. The higher you go, the worse the ulcers are. I was the quality control manager on a $20M aircraft maintenance facility for F-22 jets. It was the job that finally convinced me to retire before I had a heart attack.
Midway through an extensive home remodeling, our contractor told us that every morning he looked at the chart of jobs in progress to see “Which client’s most pissed off.”
We think he was at least half-serious. We had a really good relationship with him; he was very good, expensive, and very busy. The finished project was well worth it.
If you’re the quality control manager, does that mean that you’re the one who has to make sure that everything is done correctly? In a huge facility, how is that done? I’m imagining that a repair facility is going to have thousands of electrical outlets, for example, and each one needs to be wired directly. Was that your job?
I didn’t click the link in the OP until after I posted but what I said would hold true to a highway project as well: An earthwork/excavator to prep the site, a structural concrete guy to do the supports, a structural steel guy for under the bridge, someone to lay aggregate road base, a site utilities guy for storm sewers, an asphalt guy, a landscaper after it’s all done, electrical guy for street lamps, and whatever else I’m missing. Even in a case where the general contractor is handling some of those scopes, they’ll still treat them independently (the guys they have doing concrete aren’t doing street lamps).
I watched some of the videos during the construction of the new underground line in London. The logistics of a job like that must have given some people ulcers for sure.
We had a similar thread on this topic many years ago.
And in post number 7 there, I explained it like this:
Let’s start at the very,very beginning. ( sort of like explaining the birds and the bees, okay? When Mommy and Daddy love each other very much, they start to kiss…etc,etc.etc.)
There is an empty plot of land.
There are engineering drawings (called blueprints because 50 years ago the copying machines used blue paper).
There is a contractor.
There is somebody who wants to pay for it all.
The contractor brings in the very first workers.
They are the land surveyors… They have measuring instruments, and a bunch of wooden stakes and a hammer.They keep a copy of the blueprints in front of them, and they physically pound wooden stakes into the ground to show the bulldozer drivers where to dig, according to the measurements printed in the blueprints.
Then the contractor brings in the bulldozers.
The bulldozer drivers dig out the ground where the foundations will be. Then they go home and collect unemployment pay,(or hopefully move on to another job site.)
Then the surveyors return, and pound stakes into the ground with little nails in them, marking the precise location of each foundation. Then they go home to collect unemployment pay (or hopefully move on to another job site.)
The contractor brings in different workers (carpenters) to build the foundation forms. They stretch pieces of string between the little nails, so they can physically see where the foundations will be built. Then they build wooden forms exactly along the string lines, making boxes that will hold the wet concrete.They(or their foreman) keep a copy of the blueprint in front of them, so that they cut the wooden forms to size according to the measurements on the blueprint.
Then they go home to collect unemployment pay, (or hopefully move on to another job site.)
Then the contractor brings in different workers (steel workers) who put reinforcing steel rods into the wooden boxes. They(or their foreman) keep a copy of the blueprint in front of them, so that they can cut the steel rods to size and insert them according to the measurements on the blueprint
Then they go home to collect unemployment pay, or hopefully move on to another job site.
Then the contractor brings in different workers (concrete workers) who physically pour the concrete into the wooden boxes built by the carpenters and filled with steel by the ,well, steel workers. They don’t keep a copy of the blueprint in front of them, because the wooden boxes full of steel rods are in place, so it’s pretty obvious where to pour the concrete.
You get the picture? It looks really chaotic from afar…but it’s actually very well organized. Otherwise somebody loses a lot of money
It’s very simple…He does what his boss tells him to do.
I was the quality control manager for the construction company building the hangar, which means I had two bosses: the project manager and the Corps of Engineers rep who had quality control oversight for the Air Force. I was somewhat independent of the project manager, but she hired me, so there’s that. Everything that was installed on that project had a spec attached to it, right down to the screws being used. As a government contract, that means the “buy America” act was in effect, so almost everything had to be of American origin. Imagine the fun when I discovered that the subcontractor was using Chinese-made screws. Every damn one of them had to be replaced. Every day was an uphill battle with those Corps fuckers.
I’d had enough at about the one year mark, was feeling like I was going to have a stroke or heart attack, and said “fuck it”, pulling the plug at age 62.
In addition to Gantt charts, Pert diagrams are very useful. They provide a means to analyse the critical paths through the project. A big construction or any project does not proceed in a simple linear fashion.
An obvious example is a tall building going up, where the lower floors may be getting close to fit out, whilst upper floors are still being constructed.
If you want a project to come in on time you need to work out how to keep things active on as many fronts as possible.
But there are obvious dependencies. You don’t lay carpets in a building before most of the rest of the fit out is ready. The order of plumbing, electrical, hvac, right through to painters and furniture needs coordination. You want to limit the time where expensive equipment is available on-site. Cranes are nose-bleeding expensive. But make short work of many jobs.
On big projects things get difficult in unexpected ways. I remember talking with an engineering consulting company that specialises in this. One disaster they had to fix was a building where the builders constructed the core lift shaft to the point it obstructed the reach of a construction crane. They had to jack hammer it down. That sort of thing can lead to significant cost and time over runs. 3D VR tools can mean the construction project can be modelled to look for opportunities and problems.
A big civil engineering project can involve a huge amount of background work in planning and continuous monitoring.
As the maxim goes - there is the plan, and then there is what actually happens.
Not unique to civil engineering. Pert came from the nuclear submarine program, and saw light on missiles and space programs, and has taken root in software engineering. The ability of a program manager to have continual knowledge of how the project is doing and where there are risks and problems are is critical. Being able to plan and control the project as it unfolds is key to success. A schedule needs to have enough flexibility to avoid breaking in the face of reasonable expectations of risk, but not so far as to be inefficient and costly.
As another maxim goes. Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions.
There’s been a huge construction project going on just down the road from me, and every day as I pass by I see the progress, but also the little meetings of workers as they get their instructions for the day from their supervisors. Seeing it every day like that makes it easier to sense how it evolves, a lot less mystifyingly chaotic than one I would only glance at sporadically.
We made the mistake on one rehab project of letting the contract to a company that didn’t really have a lot of experience in construction. They assured us that they would sub out to reliable contractors. They went on the cheap and got some real lulus, then didn’t pay them on time. The flooring sub laid the vinyl without first sweeping and vacuuming the underlayment. When I showed the general how every bit of debris had telegraphed through the vinyl, he said “Oh, that’s normal.” This was only one of many fuckups that caused rework and schedule delays. We ended up going to mediation.
An interesting side note - during the height of COVID, my dishwasher died and we went looking for a new one. They were hard to find - supply chain issues. The first one, they said they could ship one from another store halfway across Canada (they didn’t, we ended going elsewhere.). The salesman mentioned that one extra expense the company was incurring during COVID was a warehouse full of appliances for an apartment building construction project. Apparently one of the shortages was the bigger electrical boxes for the electric stove plugs. For lack of these, the appliances could not go in. I guess “install everything but the stove” meant too much revisit, rework, possibly missing some install items, wear and tear during delivery, risk of theft, etc. etc. So the kitchen appliances go in all at one time, when the site is completely ready…
This was only one of many fuckups that caused rework and schedule delays. We ended up going to mediation.