Team

Mobilising a civil construction project is typically a frenetic period. For the lead manager, that’s compounded by countless people vying for their time. When that start-up time comes, most firms have a mobilisation checklist or readiness-to-proceed document. These can be excellent tools. They set out what needs to be done to satisfy client and/or company requirements, based on typically generic principles. There’s no value in making these documents larger or more cumbersome

Changes easily occur every day in the construction and mining sectors and, industry wide, they seem to be managed begrudgingly, with mixed results. On a recent project, we helped a client change the way they conducted pre-shift meetings while, on another, we worked with a team to guide them through completely changing how they reported their daily activities. These, and numerous other initiatives we’ve supported, have underscored what matters most in managing change. When ch

Inspection and test plans (ITPs) are a ubiquitous part of nearly all civil projects these days. The question is, are they useful? One of our observations, drawn from many sites and clients, is that ITPs have morphed into something more like a work instruction or process flow. People have tried to make ITPs the ‘everything’ document and, when that happens, they rapidly become a ‘nothing’ document. In many cases, they’ve become so large, convoluted and all-encompassing they are