Resource Coordination in Construction

Resource coordination is the process of making sure that all the necessary resources—people, materials, equipment, and more—are ready when and where they’re needed.

This article takes a closer look at how resource coordination works in practice, why it matters, and how effective communication can mitigate the risks when things don’t go as planned.

What is resource coordination?

Resource coordination refers to the process of planning out and making sure that you have all the resources that you need to successfully complete a construction project. There are many different types of resources in construction, including:

• Labour: the people who will do the work
• Materials: the bricks, glass, concrete, timber (and so on) 
• Equipment: the machines that workers will use on site 
• Designs, drawings and specifications: the plans people work from
• Budget: the money allocated to procure what’s needed for a project

Resource coordination is part of a big picture. To be able to complete a project and hand it over on time, on budget and to the highest level of quality, you need to coordinate the required resources ready for each key milestone of the build. This involves making sure you have the right amounts and types of resources, at the right quality and at the right times. 

Key Aspects of Resource Coordination

Making sure you’ve got the appropriate resources for a project helps you start the work in an organised, efficient way. You’ve also got to have a full understanding of the scope of works and the responsibilities of your team before you can evaluate whether you’ve got access to the needed resources for a job. Your deliverables (what you will hand over at the end of a project) should align with a predefined schedule or programme of works, the delivery schedule, the Bill of Quantities, technical specifications and a quality plan or Inspection and Test Plan (ITP). 

A deliverables schedule can help you to coordinate resources in line with key milestones. This is a schedule that helps you visualise when all your milestones and deliverables need to be ready by. It gives you timescales and warnings to keep things on track. With software, you can also link it up with your documents and capture spend, which help you have a full view of the project. This is an area where AI could really help to speed up and simplify things, but it’s worth the upfront time investment regardless. 

Managing relationships suppliers, stakeholders and expectations is an under looked part of coordinating resources. The coordination of resources, and subsequently the success of a project, can be affected by poor communication and relationships between different parties, whether that’s with subcontractors, suppliers, team members or the client.
Communication and Resource Coordination

As we just touched on, communication has a significant impact on coordinating resources properly. If you’re a project manager, it’s essential that you develop good, ongoing communication with everyone you work with or manage to get a project completed. You will have to delegate some responsibilities when coordinating resources: you can’t do it all on your own. To do this successfully, you need to make sure that you communicate every detail that needs to be understood: don’t leave any room for assumptions. 

Regular meetings where you discuss, for example, the status of deliveries and availability of materials and labour are a great way to communicate effectively with the team and keep your coordination efforts on track. It’s also a good idea to ask someone to take minutes at these meetings so you can both focus on the in-person conversation and have a record of any issues that come up or decisions that are made. 

Take other opportunities to communicate with your team to check that things are well coordinated, too. One great opportunity for doing this is when people sign in and out of the site. It gives you a chance to build relationships in a less formal situation than a meeting, and to keep tabs on potential issues with resources. 

Almost all construction projects will be impacted by variations or changes, and often this is to do with resources. For example, a particular material could be unavailable or there could be unexpected labour shortages. In these situations, it’s important to discuss these challenges as soon as they arise so that you can problem solve and make a decision that will reduce the impact of the change. It’s perhaps even more important to effectively communicate that change with everyone it will impact to make sure that work will continue smoothly. 

Early Warning Signs of Resource Coordination Issues

In a perfect world, doing all of the work to prepare and coordinate your resources at the beginning of a project will prevent any chance of issues down the line. However, there are often situations that impact your resources that you can’t necessarily predict. These could be supply chain problems, weather-related issues, equipment failures and any other circumstance outside of your control that you have to troubleshoot.

It doesn’t have to be a big event like that, however. Less far-reaching circumstances, like issues with measurements or specifications, a company going out of business or a staff member needing sick leave, can also have effects on resources.

There are some metrics that you can track to make sure that you have some idea when you might face a problem and need to course correct to maintain a good level of coordination. Continuously checking work against your ITP and materials list of Bill of Quantities will highlight if there are any materials issues.

It’s really important to focus on what is needed in an ITP or Quality plan. Just using examples from other projects can prove to be catastrophic, time consuming and costly. Understand the full purpose of the ITP and challenge your client or team if you have any doubt. Your regular progress, client and Safety, Health, Environment and Quality (SHEQ) meetings are another opportunity to keep an eye out for any problems that may affect resourcing. 

If there are any early warning signs, being organised and able to provide clear facts and suggest solutions is important. You need to react quickly, but also have a thorough and detailed explanation and solution so you can reassure the client you’re on track to resolve any issues. That could mean presenting potential alternative suppliers or subcontractors, revised schedules or alternative materials for them to approve. Don’t just turn up and tell them that you’ve got a resourcing issue without a Plan B. 

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