Abstract
In recent years, flexibility has attracted the attention of management researchers in different contexts. In this paper, we explore the use of flexibility in managing construction projects. Traditional management of construction projects has emphasized the importance of rigidity and control at various stages like planning, scheduling, resource allocation and monitoring. Such rigidity is derived from network based tools like PERT / CPM and their numerous derivatives. Such rigid tools and techniques pose difficulties in implementation when the scope of work and the environment of execution are dynamic and when the underlying assumptions of network-based models are no longer valid in a shifting context. Several researchers have found that for such situations, flexibility in managing the construction project can lead to its successful execution. The present paper provides a bird’s-eye view of different aspects of flexibility and highlights some of the issues involved in applying flexibility in practice. The application of these ideas is illustrated through a real-life case study.
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Ashok K. Pundir is currently Associate Professor of Operations Management and Associate Dean at the National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai, India. He has over sixteen years of industrial experience in the area of Industrial Engineering and Project Management in an automobile company in Mumbai, manufacturing cars. He has over nine years of teaching experience and his major interests are in the areas of project management and work systems design. He is a Fellow of Institution of Engineers (India) and Indian Institution of Industrial Engineering. He can be reached at ashokpundir@nitie.edu alternatively pundir.ashok@gmail.com.
L. Ganapathy is a Professor of Operations Management at the National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai, India. Earlier, he was a faculty of Industrial Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur and a post-doctoral fellow at the Faculty of Administration, University of New Brunswick, Canada. He has over twenty years of teaching experience and his major interests are in the areas of project management and operations research. He is a member of IEEE and other professional bodies. He can be reached at lganapathy@nitie.edu.
N. Sambandam is a Professor and Dean (R&D) at the National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai, India. He was earlier with the Department of Management Studies at the University of Toronto. His major interests lie in sequencing and scheduling and he has contributed a number of articles in these areas to several publications including the International Journal of Production Research. He received his Ph.D. in Industrial Management in Belgium and is a member of ORSA/TIMS. He can be reached at samnitie@nitie.edu
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Pundir, A.K., Ganapathy, L. & Sambandam, N. Some Approaches to Managing Flexibility in Construction Projects. Global J. Flexible Syst. Manage. 9, 21–26 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03396535
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03396535