The following Statement of Relevance logbook is concerned with looking at people and organisation within the construction industry and how the two phenomena affect the role of the project manager.

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The following Statement of Relevance logbook is concerned with looking at people and organisation within the construction industry and how the two phenomena affect the role of the project manager.

The areas that I will look at are:

* Objective, policies and ethics.

* The construction industry and its people.

* Human resource management.

* Organisations and their structures.

* Classic and modern day organisational theories.

* Managing project teams and the team work involved throughout organisations.

* Delegation and motivation throughout the organisation.

* Authority, power and leadership that influence the people within an organisation.

* And, some Models in decision making in the organisation.

All of the above areas relate strongly to theories of organisations and the people that make the organisations up.

There are many argued points that I discuss in the statements, that give insight into the different goings on in the organisation, and how people relate to one another to achieve productive work, and how a project manager, manages a team efficiently.

Statement of Relevance One

Objectives, Policies and Organisational Ethics

From the dictionary of English Language and Culture,

Aim: noun 1) Something that you intend to do or achieve.

2) E.g. the company is aiming for a 25% increase in profit.

Objective: The dictionary also recognises as similar to the description of an aim, but it really constitutes the steps one must overcome to fulfil the aim.

Strategy is what must be achieved and policy is the framework within which the activities will be conducted (Torrington, Weightman, Jones. 1989 People and Organisation.)

People and their values implement how a strategy is implemented.

"Corporate Strategy is... concerned with what people want organisations to do... the aspirations, expectations, attitudes and personal philosophies which people hold."(Johnson and Scholes, 1984 pg16)

Strategy is affected by the aspirations and expectations of that inside and outside. Customers and employees affect the strategy. Many issues of management strategy may become public strategy and will be affected by external environments. Inside the business, values to constrain strategy are mainly in labour unions.

Policies can be problematic and restrictive, and curtail the freedom to make decisions rapidly in changing environments. However, policies do introduce change, make a managers position clear and produce consistent behaviour.

Maybe there is certain opportunity to copy policy from company to company, but generally as a rule, a policy for one organisation may not be right for another.

To formulate policy one would be best suited to follow certain steps:

. Identify the topic

2. Win support

3. Decide key points to highlight

4. Work out the details

5. Win agreement

6. Implement and publicise

7. Have procedures ready

8. Monitor an outcome

Should policies be written down? If they are you are somewhat trapped with a commitment if not it may produce behaviour that is devious or difficult to control.

Some are not written, as they are not so clear as they are confident.

Statement of Relevance Two

Construction Industry and Its People

The construction industry is a particularly diverse area, where there are many individual companies that add to its existence. As a general view this has to be the way as the product that the industry produces is unique, built to order, expensive, and the process at which it occurs is separated along many different labour lines.

In some ways it is what has been the burden for the industry. The fact that it is so diverse, means that the industry relies upon the quality of the economic climate, the markets, political influences and also people from many different backgrounds. To have all of these prerequisites working in harmony together at once is a high target to accomplish at times.

The people that do make up the team within a project can change with regards to the end product being delivered, the funding of the project, the contractual agreements, and the external environments influences. Construction projects usually are undertaken by a variety of firms which change from project to project. The work of firms in the construction industry and its professions presents two types of management issues: the problem of managing firms and the of managing projects. Therefore there can be complex forms of management matrix. A conventional form is shown below.

Architecture

Structural Engineering

Service engineering

QS

General contractor

Domestic contactor

Nominated contractor

Project no.1

Project no.2 Proj. Man.

Project no.3

Management of the Firms

Sourced from Walker, A. Project Management in Construction 4th Edition. 2002. Blackwell

The diagram implies that each of the three projects are all run using the exact same professional practices. This is rarely the case. Usually there will be different mixes of professional practices depending on the project in hand.

The industry tends to perform well but not well enough, especially management wise (e.g. Wembley Stadium and The Millennium Dome).

The Egan Report, 1998 was set on Rethinking Construction. To achieve thee targets in the diagram below the industry according to the Egan Report must be transparent to everyone in the project. There must be improved working conditions and improved management and supervisory skills. The industry must replace competitive tendering with long-term relationships based on performance and efficiency.

Drivers of change Improving the Processes Targets for improvement %

Sourced from: Blockly, D, Godfrey, P. Doing It Differently systems for rethinking Construction. 2000. Thomas Telford.

Statement of Relevance Three

Human Resource Management

Soft and Hard theories of Human Resource Management (HRM) occur within organisations. Organisations as a whole adopt their own management philosophies. Thus arranging their policies.
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Tomnies (1955) saw the similarity of soft and hard to that of community and association. Where soft and hard is primarily, soft: emphasis is on people as a great asset, and hard: emphasis is on strategic business objectives. Further community and association is primarily, community: emphasis on belonging to a group brought together by common experience and shared values, and association: where people are drawn together for economic interests.

Refer to page 4 table 5 of the relevant photocopied material.

Planning plays a major role in HRM. Similarly to planning capital and financial resources.

Human ...

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