- Details
- Hits: 4996
Two drop out of the top six with 'OVEachievers' from Arup and 'Waterman is coming' from Waterman rising to 5th and 6th. Waterman are a new sponsor for MERIT and they should be proud of their team's performance. 'PM Kids' from Atkins China remain top 'CEG' an unsponsored team are doing well rise to second. The average improvement for the top six was 18% which gives a target to aim at in order to advance.
In past years at this stage the leading teams get twitchy and cautious. A final place seems to be in their grasp but a mistake, an uniformed decision, or a reckless decision that goes the wrong way could change all that. This caution and defensiveness will give opportunities for those in the chasing pack to show their flair and take courageous decisions to catch them. The top six are looking over their shoulder the chasers are breathing down their neck.
For all teams, If your strategy hasn't been reviewed this is probably the last opportunity to do so. It is time for a serious review of the strategy you've been following to determine what changes in the next three rounds will yield the biggest gains. It's time to take some decisions that earlier you might have considered as risky. This is when leadership and disciplined decision making should show its value. Teams can greatly improve their ranking in these rounds. It takes sense and strength to change your strategy.
Aspects that some teams might like to consider a little more carefully is matching the project manager to the project, a critical factor in efficiency, the number of measurement staff helps recover all you are due, the estimating effort required for accurate estimates and the company's capital. Yes there is a lot of variables and they all interact which is why disciplined decision making is required.
With three rounds to go, no team is safe.
- Details
- Hits: 5140
As 'PM KIDS' from Atkins China move to first place, 'A team with no name' from Atkins India move to second, while 'CEG' drop from first to third and 'That team' from Atkins India stay at fourth. 'STH in Atkins' from Atkins China enter the top places at fifth place and 'INNOGRADS' from Atkins GDC round up the top six. Dropping out of the top spots are 'Waterman is coming' from Waterman Aspen dropping to eighth and 'Ova achievers' from Arup dropping to seventh. But it is very tight with less than 100 points between the top six and those immediately behind.
The head office staffing is important for company capability. Have you enough marketing effort to secure bid invites? Have you enough measurement staff to recover all you're due from each contract? Have you enough quality, health and safety staff to run efficiently? Have you enough estimators to prepare accurate bids? Are your project managers' experiences well suited to the jobs they are managing? Is your own labour or subcontractor staffing optimum?
These are all construction management issues.
But it is not only the construction side of marketing, estimating, running and completing projects that determine a successful company. The financial side is equally important.
The ratio of turnover to company capital is an important indicator and at a level of 9 times the company capital the questions start to be raised as to whether your company have enough assets to support its work load. If your work load is growing you may need more capital to support the bigger company. More capital comes from retained profits or borrowing. High levels of turnover to capital indicates that the company capital is working hard, as it should be. If the ratio is much lower, it indicates that the company capital is not working hard and your Finance Director needs to consider how to respond. Grow the company's turnover, invest the capital outside the company or reduce the capital. Your Finance Director is just as key a contributor to company success as the construction directors.
The market will tighten, teams that have won jobs with low bids will see the effects ripple through their accounts and their score will not rise as before and might even fall. So we expect some changes. MERIT 2017 is far from settled. There are four more rounds left, and it's still all to play for.
- Details
- Hits: 4577
Teams are rising in the rankings, teams are falling in the rankings, with the range of improvement still large. This suggests that not all teams are as disciplined as they could be.
The tutorial helps guide teams on their decisions and deals with the mechanics and the calculations and the relationships between the various factors. These must be understood. Too many for each team member to understand them all, but with tasks allocated amongst each team member, they should have clearly defined responsibilities. The players must be an expert in their area of responsibility. In other words the team member is an individual specialist. The individual team member needs to understand all aspects of the input to the decisions for which they are responsible.
At the Board meeting, when taking decisions, the players need to present clear proposals with good sound reasoning, which the Board needs to synthesise. The CEO and Board should interrogate each player to test that their recommendations are soundly based and have not been arrived at on a casual basis. In this way, the quality of each suggested decision is tested.
The eventual decisions may well be compromises. The test is the common good not an individual's own position. This is teamwork in action. This all requires leadership. The question raised before is whether your leadership is strong enough to ensure that each team member is making a good contribution, is teamwork actually happening, is each decision interrogated and tested, are the final decisions sound and well understood. These are the key lessons from the MERIT experience: disciplined decision making; teamwork and leadership, they all go together. Anything less will not succeed, and could make it a rocky road ahead.