13 Things About Construction Planning Your Boss Wants To Know

Well, the first thing your Boss wants to know about Construction Planning is something a lot of them seem to be totally ignorant of! That is the importance of a Detailed Programme to Completion (DPC) if they want a project to finish on time, to standards and to budget!

We’ll assume your Boss is Main Contractor side, because he wants to know a lot more than do the Client-side people.

Mind you they like to be copied in on this just to make them feel important!

To be fair, the Boss’s “ignorance” might come down to commercial construction considerations.

Planners capable of coming up with a good, comprehensive DPC don’t come cheap. They are the highest paid guys in the building game! So for quite a small project let’s say a DPC costs them £20k. Sounds a lot, but dirt cheap if it saves them additional costs at the end because of Delay!

So, assuming the job does actually have a Programme worth having, the first seven things the Boss wants to know are the same as what the Site Management wants to know

i) What Tasks are involved?

ii) Who has to do them?

iii) How long will they take?

iv) What order do they have to be done in?

v) Are the materials ordered in good time to be available when needed?

vi) Is there any risk of Delay being shown?

vii) What is being done about it if there is?

All this has to be fitted in between the on-site Start Date and the Hand-Over Date.

After that point the Boss wants to know things that aren’t usually of interest to the site staff unless they number a QS amongst them. These include:-

viii) How much each Task costs?

ix) How much was allowed for the tendered cost?

x) Profit on the Task?

xi) What Invoice value to submit to the Client each month?

xii) What invoices to expect from sub-contractors and suppliers each month?

xiii) Is the project forecast to complete showing a profit?

From all that you’ll see that the extra bits of what your Boss wants to know about Construction

Planning don’t interest those of us who like to be on site actually getting the project built.

It is just the one spin-off of all that which concerns us:-

Does it put enough money in the Bank to pay our wages!