Manage Within Tolerances

When you manage the schedule and budget, you normally do not need to be accurate to the minute or to the dollar. You also do not want make all kinds of proactive changes if your project is a day over deadline one week and a day ahead of schedule the next. [Read more…]

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Understand the Characteristics of Quality for Your Project

It is hard to define product or service quality at a high level because the term “quality” is nebulous and means different things to different people. You must take the time to define the lower-level characteristics of quality for each specific service or deliverable. If you want to ensure that a service or product meets the customer’s expectations of quality, you have to understand the underlying characteristics of quality. [Read more…]

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Advising clients on the appropriate form of contract

In some procurement contexts, the choice of contract may be determined by external factors, such as requirements of the funder. For example the World Bank now require the FIDIC forms of contract to be used on projects of over £6 million, and it appears as if the NEC form may be the preferred choice for the Olympic construction programme. In such cases the form to be used will have been selected before the Architect and other consultants are appointed. [Read more…]

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Create a Short-Term Schedule to Guide the Definition and Planning Processes

The process of creating the Project Charter, schedule and budget may take a long time and may be very complicated. Therefore, the work should not be left unorganized, for the same reasons that you are building the schedule for the project to begin with. Immediately after being assigned, the project manager should create a short-term schedule to plan and guide the initial activities. [Read more…]

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Consider Earned Value Management for Understanding Schedule and Budget Status

Projects, especially larger ones, are never executed exactly as they are planned. Some activities finish early. Some finish late. Sometimes it is not easy to know if you are ahead of schedule or behind. Likewise, sometimes it is hard to know whether you are under budget or not. [Read more…]

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Estimating Effort

Effort hours must be estimated first, before duration and cost estimates can be prepared. Use the following process to estimate effort hours.

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Avoid subjective terms when signing contracts

by Andrew Gibson

 When I announced at the beginning of this year to colleagues in the UK that I would shortly be relocating to Dubai to specialise in the resolution of construction disputes, most, if not all, imagined the typical contractor/employer type of disputes arising out of defects or delaying events. [Read more…]

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UAE: time for GMP Contacting?

Clients who ask us to help them draft forms of guaranteed maximum price (GMP) contracts, have a variety of reasons for their decision to contract on this basis. Fixed price lump sum contracting, they point out, assumes that the design will be more or less complete at the time the contract is signed. [Read more…]

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How to negotiate on behalf of others

Unless your official title is “lawyer” or “agent,” you probably don’t think of yourself as an agent. But if you have ever represented a family member, your boss, your department, or your organisation in a negotiation, you have served as that party’s agent. [Read more…]

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Building Contractor Insurance

By Laura Evans

Are you planning on remodeling your house? There are many factors you should consider when hiring a contractor; these considerations include having the proper insurance. [Read more…]

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