Introduction to Quantitative Methods

Construction embraces building, civil engineering and plant erection. Building covers the whole range from single houses through housing schemes, offices, shops, schools and hospitals, to complex city-centre developments. Civil engineering is concerned with roads, railways, drainage, water supply, coastal protection, flood prevention, harbour work, power generation and mineral extraction. Building, civil engineering and plant erection come together in the construction of chemical plants, oil refineries and the whole range of other industrial undertakings including the energy-generating and distribution industries. Any individual product of the construction industry could be as small as a few hundred pounds in value in the case of small domestic structures, or as large as the multi-million-pound installations for power generation or oil-production platforms. In addition to covering a broad range of size of product unit it is a feature of the construction industry that it also covers a very wide range of skills—architect, engineer, surveyor and many different types of contractor and materials supplier. Most of these skills are organised in separate companies or units which means that in any one project there may be a large number of organisations involved. This fragmentation is a feature of the construction industry influencing the way in which it operates. Another specific feature which is typical of the construction industry is that most of its products are unique since with the exception of repetitive housing, most projects are of the one-off type. These characteristics of variability and uniqueness of product together with the fragmentation of the organisation of the industry make construction different from other industries. It should be noted that being different does not necessarily make working in the industry more difficult although many construction managers would claim that this indeed is so.