Project Management Strategies in Public Construction Project

The organization of PMU in public construction in Cantho City, Viet Nam is in initial development and in the process of improvement. There’s no enough manpower to do some functions and some people have to do many tasks at the same time. They are lack of knowledge and experience to operate and coordinate the project. During the project management process, they face organizational problem, poor quality, delay and so on. The Project Management and Project Management Unit is one issue which Cantho city pays much attention to.

Mr. Ta Chi Nhan made a case on Cantho University PMU And Dormitory Project Of Cantho University. The objectives of his study were to: (1) identify the project management functions practiced in PMU; (2) discuss the effectiveness of the project management functions in terms of project performance; (3) investigate the selected PMU order to analyze the strengths and the weaknesses of the management in practice; and propose recommendation for project management improvement.

Conclusions

After the review, analyses and study of the project management functions, practice in PMU and dormitory project of Can Tho University, it was revealed that project time management, cost, and procurement are applied. However, the risk and scope management function are not taken in to consideration.

The actual performance of this project is considered poor because the time completion was 7 months delayed and the cost overrun is about 120%. The reasons for the delay are as follows:

1. Construction contract between the owner and EPC contractor was unit-price contract which based on basic design. At that time, the technical design drawings and cost estimating are not clear. A lot of details were not specified as to what type and size. Therefore, the owner-supervisor has no sufficient information to supervise and the construction team has no sufficient information to implement. They had to wait for the design team to make a clear technical design.

2. Communication management plan is not good. The owner contacted with construction manager who did not have enough power to solve the problems from design to construction.

3. Supplying fund from state to the owner for project was untimely.

The reasons for cost overrun is because of unclear technical design and unit-price construction contract, the design team adjusted the design drawings and the owner had to pay for new specifications of doors, fences, electrical equipments, water supply equipments and so on.

The case study has also found out strengths and weaknesses of PMU in practice of project management in each area. With a general view through the three phases of this project (FS, design, construction), the following have been recognized:
- In terms of project time management, PMU was good at schedule development and control schedule in FS phase, but they could not control schedule in design and construction phase.

- In terms of project cost management, the strengths were that PMU applied good tools and technical, they hired verification consultant about cost, but PMU made a mistake in which type of contract when determining budget.

- In project quality management, PMU checked quality management system (quality plan, QA, QC) of construction team of EPC contractor and it was good. In contrast, performance quality control of design team of EPC contractor was not good. Major defect (lack of specifications in technical design) came from time for design shortly. As a result, PMU could not control quality of technical design.

- In project human resources management, the owner hired supervisors and had a good project team management.

- In FS phase, project communication management of PMU was good at communication plan (schedule, meeting plans), but in design and construction phase, flowcharts of the information flow in the project had problems.

- In terms of project procurement management, the owner and PMU selected good FS consultant, verification, supervise consultant by their dossier of proposals. In design and construction phase (EPC contractor), the owner and PMU conducted procurements (as unit-price contract) not good.

- In project safety management, PMU and the owner’ supervisor checked safety plan, safety plan execution, administration and reporting of contractor. They were good. But they have not examined health for staffs and workers.

- In project environmental management, contractor had environmental plan, assurance, and control good.

Recommendations

In order to help PMU in implementation project management functions better, government should add more policies, regulations and require implementation strictly such as follows:
a. The owner is not allowed to assign EPC contractor in unit-price contract which base on basic design.

b. The government should provide sufficient capital funds to keep the building schedule in accordance with the approved building schedule.

c. More policies and instructions for project management should be applied.

His thesis abstract is copied and pasted.

Abstract

For a successful construction project, good implementation of project management functions is required first and very important. In Vietnam today, the State invests in many public projects. Most of them, state establish project management Unit to manage project directly according to law and regulations of Vietnam.

This report review project management theory, management functions commonly applied in developed countries and developing countries, studying concurrent the project management functions according to laws and regulations of Vietnam.

The report studies a typical project management Unit in Can Tho city, identify and analyze the practical application of project management functions. Since then, the report reviews the strengths, weaknesses and suggests improvements for this project and can be applied to other similar projects.