Civil Engineering Project Management (4th Edition)

174 Civil Engineering Project Management
Contractors sometimes use the critical path method to support a claim for
delay; but the same problem applies that any critical path is based on only one
particular order in which work is constructed, and other orders may be possible.
14.6 The part played by the agent in achieving
progress
It is the contractor’s agent who has on-the-spot responsibility for programming
the work and keeping progress in line. The resident engineer’s job is to assist
the agent, if asked, and provide any information that the agent needs or that
will be helpful to him. As the work proceeds the resident engineer will keep
a check on progress, and must advise the engineer when unacceptably slow
progress is occurring. Before acting formally in this matter the resident engineer
should put his comments to the agent, seeking to find out why work is going
slow and endeavouring to persuade him to take steps to speed up construction.
He must also identify causes of delay for which the employer is responsible.
A contractor’s slow progress can be caused by many factors – lack of labour,
lack of skilled key men, a weak general foreman, or an agent not sufficiently
decisive or good at organization, or tending to under-estimate the difficulty of
a job and failing to foresee problems arising. Sometimes the cause may lie with
the contractor’s head office, such as slowness in getting materials or equipment
to site. This may be indicative of the contractor being outstretched, either
organizationally or financially. It is important that the resident engineer gets
sufficient information to give the engineer reliable advice as to where the cause
of slow progress lies because, if the lack of progress continues, the engineer
will have to take up the matter formally with the contractor.
A good agent is an inestimable benefit to a project. He automatically thinks
in terms of the ‘critical path’ that lies ahead, and has clearly in his mind where
the job ‘ought to be’ in a month’s or 2 months’ time. But to get there he has
to make many decisions in the present. He has to seize opportunities, overcome
delays, take extra work into account, suffer inefficiencies of labour and
breakdowns of plant, find solutions to unexpected problems, face the vagaries
of the weather and, despite all these, keep the work going at the required pace
to gain his targets. The immediate targets are short term – this week’s in detail,
next week’s in outline. If he can achieve them, he knows they are within the
longer term strategy he has already worked out.
He has also to be aware of the need to have safety margins of time in hand for
overcoming all sorts of difficulties that his experience tells him will inevitably
crop up, even though he cannot forecast the precise form they will take. Many
factors influence his judgement. He will be quick to detect when things are in
his favour – when weather seems to promise fine, when the spirit on the job
is good and the men are working efficiently as a team – and, grasping such
opportunities, he will use them to drive the job onwards, knowing that one