Construction Project Planning Process Model for Small‐Medium Builders

Abstract

The construction project planning (CPP) stage is a critical stage in the project development and delivery phase of the life cycle of a building project. This stage lays the framework upon which most of the construction decisions are made. Despite its importance, many construction firms go through this stage in an arbitrary fashion. This problem is particularly crucial for small‐medium‐size building projects and the firms constructing such projects in a design‐build environment. The CPP stage for such firms is chosen as the targeted domain of construction for this paper. The research effort reported in this paper had the following objectives: (1) To highlight the importance of CPP as an integral function of the construction project management cycle; and (2) to develop a CPP process model that can provide descriptive representation of the microlevel steps of an integrated approach to cost plans and time plans generation. The usefulness of such a model to serve a number of needs related to project planning, is demonstrated by associating each step of the CPP process with the appropriate conventional or knowledge‐based computer applications.