The Construction Mba Practical Approaches To Const

Proven business strategies for operating a profitable and efficient construction firm Written by a successful management researcher, advisor, and educator to construction contractors, The Construction MBA reveals effective operating practices for managing the multiple processes that must work simultaneously to make a construction firm consistently profitable. The methods in the book apply to both general and specialty contracting firms and describe how to grow both the top line and bottom line. This strategic resource explains how to integrate metrics into your business model that allow you to identify and react to critical trends. You'll learn ways to gain the competitive edge by adopting superior processes, speeding up your business cycle, and maximizing client satisfaction. Tips for positioning your firm on the "sweet spot" of the risk-reward curve are also included. Realworld case studies demonstrate the concepts presented in this practical guide. In addition, eight legendary management books are reviewed and their lessons are applied to the construction contracting business. The Construction MBA covers: The new business model Corporate objectives and strategies Work acquisition Operations management Human resources Financial management Technology Good operating practices

This detailed overview of the construction contracting business delivers an invaluable collection of best practices, forms, templates, and checklists designed to reduce risks and increase profits. Contractors will learn everything they need to know about the make-or-break areas of estimating, pricing, bidding, project management, and financial management. The author is well-known in the industry, with a weekly newsletter, website, online digest, regular column for Contractor magazine, and 70-plus seminar bookings for 2006 Extensive examples and illustrations help readers apply the insights offered

CONSTRUCTION ACCOUNTING & FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, 3/e helps construction professionals and construction management students master the principles of financial management, and adapt and apply them to the challenge of profitably managing construction companies. It integrates content that has traditionally been taught through separate accounting, finance, and engineering economics texts. Students learn how to account for a construction company's financial resources; how to manage its costs, profits, and cash flows; how to evaluate different sources of funding a company's cash needs; and how to quantitatively analyze financial decisions. Readers gain hands-on experience through 220 example problems and over 390 practice problems, many of them based on situations actually encountered by the author. This edition adds more than 100 new discussion questions, and presents financial equations and accounting transactions more visually to support more intuitive learning.

Prev. ed: Construction methods, materials, and techniques, Clifton Park, N.Y., Thomas Delmar Learning, c2006.

A comprehensive book on project management, covering all principles and methods with fully worked examples, this book includes both hard and soft skills for the engineering, manufacturing and construction industries. Ideal for engineering project managers considering obtaining a Project Management Professional (PMP) qualification, this book covers in theory and practice, the complete body of knowledge for both the Project Management Institute (PMI) and the Association of Project Management (APM). Fully aligned with the latest 2005 updates to the exam syllabi, complete with online sample Q&A, and updated to include the latest revision of BS 6079 (British Standards Institute Guide to Project Management in the Construction Industry), this book is a complete and valuable reference for anyone serious about project management. •The complete body of knowledge for project management professionals in the engineering, manufacturing and construction sectors •Covers all hard and soft topics in both theory and practice for the newly revised PMP and APMP qualification exams, along with the latest revision of BS 6079 standard on project management in the construction industry •Written by a qualified PMP exam accreditor and accompanied by online Q&A resources for self-testing

The world of construction is intrinsically linked with that of finance, from the procurement and tendering stage of projects right through to valuation of buildings. In addition to this, things like administrations, liquidations, mergers, take-overs, buy-outs and floatations affect construction firms as they do all other companies. This book is a rare explanation of common construction management activities from a financial point of view. While the practical side of the industry is illustrated here with case studies, the authors also take the time to build up an understanding of balance sheets and P&L accounts before explaining how common tasks like estimating or valuation work from this perspective. Readers of this book will not only learn how to carry out the tasks of a construction cost manager, quantity surveyor or estimator, they will also understand the financial logic behind them, and the motivations that drive senior management. This is an essential book for students of quantity surveying or construction management, and all ambitious practitioners.

PMBOK&® Guide is the go-to resource for project management practitioners. The project management profession has significantly evolved due to emerging technology, new approaches and rapid market changes. Reflecting this evolution, The Standard for Project Management enumerates 12 principles of project management and the PMBOK&® Guide &– Seventh Edition is structured around eight project performance domains.This edition is designed to address practitioners' current and future needs and to help them be more proactive, innovative and nimble in enabling desired project outcomes.This edition of the PMBOK&® Guide:•Reflects the full range of development approaches (predictive, adaptive, hybrid, etc.);•Provides an entire section devoted to tailoring the development approach and processes;•Includes an expanded list of models, methods, and artifacts;•Focuses on not just delivering project outputs but also enabling outcomes; and• Integrates with PMIstandards+™ for information and standards application content based on project type, development approach, and industry sector.

Applying the principles in this book unleashes ingenuity that achieves, solidifies and perpetuates a new performance culture of mutual benefit. In this culture, project teams will prepare their work in task packages and enable workflow necessary to leave inefficiency of time and resource, literally, no place to hide. Project examples will help teams implement the principles that shorten cycle times, eliminate error, improve quality and reduce costs to succeed in meeting project commitments. Emerging Lean enterprise relationships between clients, EPC contractors and their entire supply chain will advance what constitutes the new, market-differentiating performance of individuals, project teams and companies - justifying high levels of trust and inter-organizational efforts to improve. Client executives will learn to recognize root causes of risk and sources of excellence to mitigate them. Well-developed strategic improvement is often constrained because the traditional way - current means and methods - fit squarely in everyone's comfort zone. By learning to ask the right questions, top-client leadership will soon render overruns from the best traditional systems as "not-good enough" and strive for a new level of excellence. EPC executives will better engage creative voices from their best resources and stakeholders to resolve all concerns and define a unified vision for how to deliver on clients' expectations without overruns during capital project delivery. Lean methods will effectively assure that vision, principles and best expectations are understood and implemented at the workface. Department, discipline and stakeholder leaders will align and no longer frustrate each other and their clients. They will plan and execute with increased efficiency and effectiveness. Cost reduction will accelerate, retaining only client-valued quality - enabling a nimble response to market opportunities and threats. Project and program managers will confidently accept intense, market-induced cost and schedule-reduction efforts. They will apply new metrics, measure potential and extract, align and pilot improvements. They will make workface progress transparent to simplify resource balancing, full utilization and workface flow during all project phases. The results will differentiate team members and their project's performance on the world stage. Project professionals and the skilled labor force will gain confidence to make and keep increasingly difficult commitments and experience thereby increasing opportunity in an organization known for excellence. They will fully engage heart and mind for leaders who expect excellence and they trust to enable and reward best practice performance while they jointly eliminate root causes of problems before they happen. This book guides readers through each essential role for the transformation to Lean...not just at the lowest levels but of the entire business model and all the supporting processes. Resulting market recognition of sustained excellence of people, their systems and they way they work together will create a market-leading force.

A complete introduction to building robust and reliable software Beginning Software Engineering demystifies the software engineering methodologies and techniques that professional developers use to design and build robust, efficient, and consistently reliable software. Free of jargon and assuming no previous programming, development, or management experience, this accessible guide explains important concepts and techniques that can be applied to any programming language. Each chapter ends with exercises that let you test your understanding and help you elaborate on the chapter's main concepts. Everything you need to understand waterfall, Sashimi, agile, RAD, Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programming, and many other development models is inside! Describes in plain English what software engineering is Explains the roles and responsibilities of team members working on a software engineering project Outlines key phases that any software engineering effort must handle to produce applications that are powerful and dependable Details the most popular software development methodologies and explains the different ways they handle critical development tasks Incorporates exercises that expand upon each chapter's main ideas Includes an extensive glossary of software engineering terms