Project Management: Stages, Coordination and Control
Project management questions ask how you deliver the design, not just how you draw it. The exam tests the stage chain, procurement choice, consultant coordination, and the records that let you prove what happened and when.
Stages and deliverables
Program → design → tender → construction → handover → defects period. Each stage has deliverables, approvals and fee milestones, and the schedule links them as dependent activities.
Procurement and coordination
Design-bid-build, design-build and management contracting distribute risk differently. The consultant matrix, drawing register, requests for information and submittals keep design intent alive on site.
Control
Quality through inspection and test plans; schedule through the critical path; cost through commitments against budget; and records through minutes, letters, photographs and daily logs.
Worked example
A late building permit delays the start on site. Reasoning: if permit approval sits on the critical path, site pressure cannot recover the delay. The answer is to re-sequence - advance permitted enabling works, procure long-lead items early, and resequence trades - and to record the cause contemporaneously so that an extension of time can be justified later.
Traps
Confusing supervision with project management; giving verbal instructions to the contractor; approving a submittal without checking it against the specification; discovering a delay only after the fact because no minutes or logs exist.