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Engineering Online

CE 561 Construction Project Management

3 Credit Hours

Successful Construction Project Management is not only critical to the success of the project engineer, construction manager and the contractor, but reduces overall costs to the owner and society. Modern construction presumes an in depth understanding of the theory and techniques associated with planning, analysis and control. This is a practice oriented, construction project-planning, management and control course emphasizing standard quantitative and qualitative techniques. The Planning, Management, and Control skills necessary to function effectively on complex projects share a common requirement for understanding scheduling, cost control, and their inter-relationship for ensuring successful project performance.

Prerequisite

BS in Engineering, preferably Civil Engineering or Construction Engineering, or permission of the instructor.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, the successful student will be able to:

  • Understand the importance of Front End Planning on achieving project success
  • Learn about key project management factors related to achieving construction project success and indicators of failure.
  • Explore industry best practices in the area of constructability, safety, and value analysis
  • Learn how to develop a conceptual estimate using different methods including both deterministic and probabilistic approaches.
  • Understand the components of a risk analysis plan and use it to estimate contingency for a project.
  • Learn about core and innovative project control metrics to include in a project execution plan.
  • Learn about managing complex first-of-a-kind projects from a technology readiness assessment and commissioning and start-up perspective.

Course Outline

  • Introduction to Project Management and Achieving Successful outcomes. Review basic concepts (60%): front end planning, factors related to achieving project success, industry best practices associated with constructability, value analysis, and safety.
  • Project control theory, tools and techniques (30%): deterministic and probabilistic estimating, core and innovative metrics and indicators including earned value metrics; risk assessment management planning using Monte Carlo simulation.
  • Complex project considerations (10%): success considerations for complex projects that are first-of-a-kind in nature, nuclear projects involving new technologies, discussion of NQA-1 quality standards and others.

Textbook

Merrow, Edward W., Industrial Megaprojects: Concepts, Strategies, and Practices for Success, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2011. Copies of selected slides will be sent to the student (in pdf (Adobe) format) during the course.

Course Requirements

HOMEWORK and PROJECTS: this is a project-based course

EXAMINATIONS: Final Exam.

Updated: 10/31/2022