by Bill Dall
We’ve seen it a bunch of times - some project is very late or very over budget. And, as a bystander who’s tired of waiting for the roads or paths to re-open, or just tired of seeing scaffolding all over the place, it’s easy to just say, ‘why can’t THEY make a better plan and get this done quicker?’
But some projects do go through extra long planning phases. For some large projects, you can see months to years of planning, studies, and public consultations.
Well, why can’t THEY just make a decision and start the project?
Because everyone from 10,000 feet away is, well, not intelligent. Ask armchair quarterbacks.
Pre-construction takes up to 20% of the time and often over 10% of the cost of a project. Is it worth it?
Definitely. Pre-construction planning, studies, estimation, permitting and sourcing are all critical parts of the construction project lifecycle that makes projects successful and efficient.
But in waiting too long or gathering too much non-critical data to start, the cost and timeline of these projects can increase substantially.
The balance is getting the critical things done so you can make the right decisions, move ahead, and live with some variability. You don’t always know what you don’t know, so you can spend a tonne of time getting less critical information when after you’ve started you’re blindsided by something completely different: unexpected features underground, a major supplier issue, extreme weather, coordination issues, scope creep…
Well, NEVER scope creep 😉
In the end, Hofsteader’s law, “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's law,” does it’s thing and you over-planned. You needed to get shovels in the ground as early as possible.
One key part of pre-construction is estimation of timelines and costs.
Parametric estimation has proven benefits for certain project types. It enables owners and builders to generate quick, accurate estimates, make faster decisions, and compare alternatives with ease.
By getting better estimates and making better decisions faster, we can give the builders more of that pre-construction time back to build the things that matter to all of us.
Photo by https://www.pexels.com/@ivan-s/