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About INDUSTRIAL CONSTRUCTION - A HANDBOOK
When I started out in the engineering and construction industry, in the 1960s, we did our estimating and planning with graphics pad and slide rule, laboriously ‘typexing’ changes and errors, often re-doing a schedule several times in the process! We knew what we had to do, but completing a project on time and within budget was very much a ‘hit and miss affair’ with overruns on both tending to be the norm. Then eventually, commencing in the late ‘70s, along came computerization. Has computerization resulted in all construction projects being completed successfully on time and within budget? Answer – No, unfortunately not, and as projects have increased in size and complexity there have been plenty of disasters to support that conclusion. So why can’t all the new technologies serve to guarantee success with every project? Answer – Because the people sitting in front of their computer screens do not necessarily understand the ‘nuts and bolts’ of what goes on at the construction work face and neither do the many people who are indirectly involved in supporting the project from afar. In 2013, I created a web-site, ‘Constructing Heavy industrial Projects’ (CHIP) that would make available, to anyone, information gathered from my years in the business of constructing industrial plants. Why? – Because my ‘learning curve’ had been extremely long, thanks to 45 years diversified experience, with knowledge accumulated that could not have been gained academically. Glance through degree curriculums offered by universities, or MBA courses offered by business colleges, and there will be no shortage of references to building, structural and civil engineering construction, but not a lot related to mechanicals & electricals. Yet most of the larger construction projects embarked on today are industrial and multi-disciplinary, usually involving no more than 15% -20% civil, building and infrastructural content. Furthermore, because of their multi-disciplinary nature, industrial type projects, such as oil or gas plants, power stations etc can go horribly wrong, overrunning schedules by months or years and budgets by millions or billions of dollars. Why do industrial projects, as opposed to traditional civil projects, get into trouble more frequently? For a variety of reasons, of course, but a contributory cause is a failure of management at all levels to fully comprehend the scope, complexity and logistics involved in the works that have to be completed within a very tight timescale. . Granted, MBA courses in construction management are available, albeit related mainly to civil and buildings, but a gap remains, as evidenced by the numbers of people who have accessed my web-site in the three years since its inception. However, CHIP became too large and because a web-site is not entirely suitable as a means of getting into detail, I have transposed the web site’s contents into this book, complementing and expanding upon information carried by CHIP, which in turn will be removed from the Web by end 2017. The CHIP web-site carried numerous on-line calculators, converted from Excel spreadsheets into HTML format, for all to use. Widgets for all those calculators can be found in the following pages, allowing readers freedom to copy and embed same in their own web-pages, or on any other host web-site. Such calculators are intended solely for ‘ball-park’ estimates, but as we know, a rough calculation made by an expert can often be surprisingly accurate.
