Construction Project Management: An Integrated Approach
is a management approach to leading projects and the effective choice and use of project management tools and techniques. It seeks to push the boundaries of project management to take on board future needs and user issues.
Integration of the construction project, meaning closer relations between the project team, the supply chain and the client, is long overdue; however, despite some signs of growth in this area, the industry nonetheless remains fragmented in its approach. The role of the project manager is to integrate diverse interests and unify objectives to achieve a common goal. This has now broadened to include a responsibility, on the parts of both client and team, to ensure that construction addresses current and future societal needs. From an economic perspective, a great deal of waste is connected with conflict, thus a holistic approach that increases the efficiency and effectiveness of the task at hand will inject energy into project management. This third edition now takes on board the impact of technology in building information modelling and other digitised technologies such as artificial intelligence. Together, they open up avenues for more direct and incisive action to test creative design, manufacture directly and communicate spontaneously and intuitively. In time, such technologies will change the role of project managers but will never take away their responsibility to be passionate about construction and to integrate the team. A new chapter has been added that considers future societal needs. This edition is also reordered to make the project life cycle and process chapters clearer.
This book combines best practice in construction with the theories underpinning project management and presents a wealth of practical case studies – many new. It focuses on all construction disciplines that may manage projects. The book is of unique value to students in the later years of undergraduate courses and those on specialist postgraduate courses in project management and also for practitioners in all disciplines and clients who have experienced the frustration caused by the fragmentation of construction projects.