Construction Procedures
In most construction projects, earthwork and excavation Take up a large portion of the time and budget depending on the project size. Earthwork and excavation Are a relatively broad topic and is composed of smaller subsets of excavation Including but not limited to trenching underground tunnelling excavation and wall shafts.
Each excavation project has similar procedures, but it’s still unique in its own right. In most cases, the excavation process includes setting up benchmarks other construction sites, surveying the topography, stripping the topsoil on the site, and excavating to the proper depth that is shown on the drawings.
Construction Equipment
Luckily, there is a wide variety of excavation equipment available to contractors today; the following specifications are important when determining the right equipment for your job. These include but are not limited to engine power size bucket capacity and weight. If you are using an excavator of any kind choosing the right excavator attachments are also critical there are different styles of buckets for ditch cleaning grading and much more. To add on to this critical topic, a major decision that companies must choose is whether to perform a dry hire or wet hire when it comes to equipment.
In a wet hire scenario, The general contractor or construction manager has to hire both the machinery and the operator. In a dry hire scenario, construction manager operates the machine themselves. This scenario is beneficial for a multitude of reasons, including lower costs and familiarity with the operator.
Earthwork Calculations
Another critical component of managing construction earthwork efficiently is to perform accurate and detailed earthwork calculations. If a contractor’s calculations are low, they will lose profit rather quickly as they will be on-site longer to cut up more dirt than they anticipated. this will result in increased costs, lesser productivity, and a substantial schedule delay.
These calculations are commonly referred to as cut and fill calculations. In today’s technology market, there has been an emergence of construction technology specifically for earthwork. A lot of intelligence software uses GPS coordination To give contractors an accurate representation of the site that they are working on.
Analyzing Productivity
In addition, it’s important for the project manager of the site crew to analyze productivity at various points during the project. If available, the project manager should look at equipment and personnel productivity rates if that particular company did a similar job in the past. This can serve as a valuable benchmark on how many man-hours and equipment hours the company can project to the project manager of the construction management firm. A metric that’s commonly used in it, and that is one of the most valuable is cubic yards per hour.
The project manager of the earthwork crew should be keeping track have cubic yards per hour as the job progresses. However, there are a lot of factors that play into earthwork productivity, including weather and unsuitable soils if they are present. Nonetheless, if the conditions are somewhat ideal, the cubic yards per hour of earthmoving should be relatively high and efficient.
Construction Schedule
It is also critical that the construction manager is cognizant a schedule and how to meet the schedule of that given project effectively. In order to meet the schedule, the construction manager must have a variety of personal skills, including but not limited to communication analytics judgment and delegating.
These are a reflection Of the person as a whole; if the construction manager takes pride in these characteristics, this is an indication that he trusts his crew to perform the job to a high quality.
Crew Personnel
Lastly, a knowledgeable construction manager in the earthwork field has a pretty good idea of the crew size that he or she will need to perform the earthwork phase effectively. What happens a lot of times his companies don’t put together a crew that’s big enough to perform the earthwork in accordance with the overall construction schedule. As a result, the project gets delayed because subcontractors are waiting on the earthwork crew to finish their scope of work.