Construction Process

 Some construction process are small renovations or repair jobs, like repairing or fixing leaks, where the owner may act as designer, paymaster and laborer for the entire project. However more complex or ambitious projects usually require additional multi-disciplinary expertise and manpower. So the owner may commission one or more specialist businesses, to undertake detailed planning, design, construction and handover of the work. Often the owner will appoint one business to oversee the project ( this may be a designer, a contractor, a construction manager or other advisors ). Such specialists are normally appointed for their expertise in project delivery, and will help the owner define the project brief, agree on a budget and schedule, liaise with relevant public authorities, and procure the services of other specialists. 

Contracts are agreed for the delivery of services by all businesses, alongside other detailed plans aimed at ensuring legal, timely, on-budget and safe delivery of the specified works. Design, finance and legal aspects overlap and interrelate. The design must be not only structurally sound and appropriate for the use and location, but must also be financially possible to build. The financial structure must be adequate to build the design provided, and must pay amounts that are legally owed. Legal structures integrate design with other activities, and enforce financial and other construction process. 

These processes also involved procurement strategies. Client may for example, appoint a business to design the project, after which a competitive process is undertaken to appoint a lead contractor to design the asset, they may appoint a business to lead design and construction. Such form of procurement emphasize collaborative relationships between clients, contractors and other stakeholders within a construction projects, seeking to ameliorate often highly competitive and adversarial industry practices. 

Planning 

When applicable, a proposed construction project must comply with local land-use planning policies with codes and proper building zone requirements. A project will normally be accessed by the authority, the municipality for its potential impacts on neighboring properties. Data may be gathered through site analysis, site surveys and geotechnical investigations. Construction normally cannot start until planning permission has been granted, and may require preparatory work to ensure relevant infrastructure has been upgraded before building work has been commenced. 

Some legal requirements come from malum in se considerations, or the desire to prevent indisputably bad phenomena, e.g., explosion or bridge collapses. Other legal requirements come from malum prohibitum considerations, or factors that are a matter of customs or expectation, such as isolating businesses from a business district or residences from a residential district. An attorney may seek changes or exemptions in the law that governs the land where building will be built, either by arguing that the rule is inapplicable or the custom is no longer needed. 

Finance 

Depending on the type of project, mortgage bankers, accountants and cost engineers may participate in creating an overall plan for the financial management of a construction project. The presence of the mortgage banker is highly likely, even in relatively small projects, since the owner's equity in the property is the most obvious source of funding for a building project. Accountants act to study the expected monetary flow over the life of the project and to monitor the payouts through the process. Professionals including cost engineers, estimators and quantity surveyors apply expertise to relate the work and materials involve to a proper valuation. 

Financial planning involves adequate safeguards and contingency plans are in place before the project is started, that ensures that the plan is properly executed over the life of the project. Construction projects can suffer from preventable financial problems. Large projects can involve highly complex financial plans and often start with a conceptual cost estimate performed by a building estimator. As portions of a project are completed, they may be sold, supplanting one lender or owner for another. Public-private partnerships may also be used to deliver major projects. 
According to McKinsey in 2019, "The vast majority of large construction projects go over budget and take 20% longer than expected". 

Legal 

A construction project is a complex net of construction projects and other legal obligations, each of which parties must carefully consider. A contract is the object of exchange of a set of obligations between two or more parties. For example, construction delays may be costly, so construction contracts set out clear expectations and clear paths to manage delays. Poorly drafted contracts may lead to confusion and costly disputes. 

At the start of a project, legal advisors seek to identify ambiguities and other potential sources of trouble in the contract structure, and to present options for preventing problems. In each case, the lawyer facilitates an action of obligations that matches the reality of the project. 

Procurement 

Traditional or Design bid build 

Design bid-build is the most common and well established method of construction procurement. In this arrangement the architect, engineer or builder acts for the client as project coordinator. They design the works, prepare specifications and design deliverables, administer the contracts, tender the works and manage the works from inception to completion. In parallel there is a direct contractual link between the client and the contractor. The arrangement is continued untill the project is ready to hand-over. 

Design-build 

Design-build became more common from the 20th century, and involves the client contracting a single entity to provide design and construction. In some cases the design-build package can also include finding the site. Typically the client invites several D&B contractors to submit proposals to meet the project brief and then selects a preferred supplier. Often this will be a consortium involving a design fund and a contractor. 

Construction Management 

In a construction management arrangement, the client enters into separate contracts with the designer, a construction manager and individual trade contractors. The client takes on the contractual role while the construction or project manager provides the active role of managing various trade contracts and ensuring that they complete all work smoothly and effectively together. This approach is often used to speed up procurement processes, to allow the client greater flexibility in design variation throughout the contract, and to provide greater client control. 

Design 

In the industrialization world, construction often translates the design into reality. Most commonly the design team is employed by the property owner. Depending upon the type of projects, a design team may include architects, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, structural engineers, fire protection engineers, planning consultants etc. A 'lead designer' will normally be identified to help coordinate different disciplinary inputs to the overall design. 

The increasing complexity of construction projects creates the need for design professional trained in all phases of a project's life-cycle and develop and appreciation of the asset as an advance technological system requiring close integration of many sub-systems and their individual components, including sustainability. For buildings, building engineering is an emerging discipline that attempts to meet this new challenge. 

On-site Construction 

Once contractors or other relevant professionals have been appointed and designs are sufficiently advanced, work may commence on the project site. Typically a construction site will include a secure perimeter to restrict unauthorised access, site-access control points, office and welfare accommodation involved in the project team and storage area for materials, machineries and equipment. 

Commissioning and Hand-over 

Commissioning is the process of verifying that all subsystems of a new building work as intended to achieve the owner project requirements and as designed by the project's architects and engineers. 

Defects liability period 

A period after handover during which the owner may identify any shortcomings in relation to the building specification, with a view to the contractor correcting the defect. 

Maintenance, repair and improvement 

Maintenance involves functional checks, servicing, repairing or replacing of necessary devices, equipment, machinery, building infrastructure and supporting utilities in industrial, business, governmental and residential installations. 

Demolition 

Demolition is the discipline of safely and efficiently tearing down buildings and other artificial structures. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a building apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for reuse purposes.