Electrical Construction Foreman Task Scheduling

Abstract

The short-term task scheduling of electrical foremen working in commercial and institutional construction projects was evaluated using a combination of interviews, questionnaires, and field observations. The planning environment was evaluated qualitatively, including the project and firm size, availability of resources, planning horizon, and issuing of directives. The quantitative analysis of factors presumed to affect the scheduling was emphasized in the investigation. These factors included task duration, criticality, likelihood of problems during execution, actual problems, and offset in planned start. This investigation found that foremen had almost complete authority over their daily crew task assignments. The favored planning span to articulate an explicit schedule was the workweek. Labor availability was more constraining than material supply in the formulation of the schedule. Directives were verbally issued in all observed cases. Analysis of scheduling parameters showed that dependence on other subcontractors' progress was the most common source of problems, and that problems acted as uniform background noise in the scheduling accuracy. Short and near tasks were the easiest to schedule. Some tasks were categorized as “fillers,” used to achieve continuity in labor utilization.