The demand for the construction industry is growing tremendously. Although the demand for the construction industry is making it the world’s largest industry sector, there are growing challenges in construction projects such as delays and budget issues.
Often, it gets difficult for project managers to keep the site running safely, smoothly, and on budget. In fact, most projects go over budget and suffer significant delays.
According to Mckinsey research, around 98% construction projects suffer terribly due to over budget and massive delays.
You must be wondering what’s leading to these significant delays in its growing demand? Here are some challenges that are faced by building construction projects in Ireland and a few devised strategies that you can implement to curb them:
1. Inadequate Risk Management
Often, construction project managers implement safeguards to protect against long-term risks that result in escalation of problems and challenges having a significant impact on the projects.
Unreliable subcontractors, scheduling issues, or random changes in stakeholder preferences can all cause massive delays in projects.Thus, it becomes crucial to always have contingency plans to avoid these potential issues. Also, to overcome this challenge, try investing more in safety training programs to ensure that your project runs smoothly.
2. Lack of pre-defined goals
It gets tough to devise strategies and work efficiently when you don’t have clear or pre-defined goals. In fact, a construction project can run over budget and get delayed if there’s no aim.
Performance management is one of the crucial aspects of management. To implement this and allocate tasks efficiently, it’s important to know the tasks crystal-clear.
Define your project goals and then break them down into small targets in order to accomplish them. Daily targets can make a huge difference to your project goals. If daily targets aren’t accomplished, then hold people accountable for them. You just keep compounding it on other days. This will help your project meet the deadline on time and within budget.
3. Lack of communication
Communication is an important key factor in any profession, and it becomes even more important when you delegate your work to team members.Communication gaps in the team often result in inappropriate decisions and delays in projects.
There should always be clear and efficient communication, where at the end of the day, the project manager informs the teammates about their progress and obstacles. It becomes easy to assess their performance and give them constructive feedback. If there are no in-person meetings, try using different kinds of software as an alternative.
4. Delayed Cash Flow
Just like any other company, construction companies heavily rely on invoicing. If the system becomes outdated, it can even result in failed or delayed payments which can hamper the company’s cash flow.
It’s quite essential that the company’s invoicing system remains updated and evolves so that it doesn’t negatively impact the projects while ensuring smooth payments.
5. Limited Skills
You must have heard that construction companies are highly reputed companies in the industry, constituting skilled members.
However, a skill gap is often found between teammates, where they don’t know how to coordinate effectively and work together. Sometimes, skill gaps can result in massive delays in projects.
It becomes essential for the project manager to identify the skill gaps before they cause a negative impact on the projects. Once these skills gaps are assessed, it becomes easy to fill them efficiently.
6. Unreal Expectations
Some clients and stakeholders often have unreal expectations, such as allotting the project on a limited budget or completing the project ahead of time.These tasks become challenging when a project manager isn’t able to achieve it despite slogging. In fact, over-working and still not achieving goals can hamper productivity resulting in over-ehantion and low self-esteem.
Also, it might be possible that these expectations have been a result of poor forecasting. Assess the issue and try to break down the forecast into smaller monthly, weekly, or daily targets. If it still seems unachievable, then try to have crystal clear conversations with stakeholders. You can also formulate an alternate plan which can be achievable within the stipulated budget.
7. Labor shortage
Labor shortages are one of the massive concerns of the construction industry. There has been an excessive shortage of laborers in the industry since 2012, and it got even worse during the pandemic. In fact, the growth of the construction industry is outpacing employment growth.
In a study conducted by the Conference Board, the construction industry was ranked ninth in labor shortages. These higher labor shortages are also highly affecting other occupational sectors as well, which include electrical and plumbing.
Moreover, these labor shortages often result in delayed projects and increased prices. If your construction company is suffering from severe labor shortages, make sure you devise certain effective strategies to fix this issue before it massively affects your business.
8. Overlook Construction Equipment Cost
Most companies tend to overlook the construction equipment costs at the beginning of the project. Replacing the equipment in mid-construction often results in overrunning costs as the costs get converted into additional expenses at the end of the project.
In addition, replacement of construction equipment costs a lot of money, which ends up affecting the revenue of the company.
It’s highly recommended that you keep a close eye on the equipment so that as soon as they start malfunctioning, you can easily replace them without bearing any additional costs in the middle of the construction project.
Also, it wouldn’t be fair to say that equipment costs are just project overrun costs. Sometimes it can also happen due to a change in a client’s requirements.
Conclusion
If your construction company is facing the same issues, such as a lack of clear goals, lack of communication, delayed cash flow, labor shortages, a lack of skilled laborers, or irregular construction equipment costs, and it’s impacting your business, then try to assess them and fix them before they become a huge challenge for you and the company.
We’ve tried to cover the most common and prominent challenges that this industry faces. We hope it helps you fix the problem!