Construction Project Management Practices by Small Contractors

A study has been conducted in the Laboratory of Construction Management and Engineering, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, ITB, which aims to identify how the practice of planning, progress update, and control project carried out by small contractors. Furthermore, using information on practices conducted in the field, this research continues to build a construction project management software for small contractor that easy used to relying on a computer spreadsheet application (Microsoft Excel)Abdu et al. 2006).

Preliminary results about the construction project management practices by small contractors in the city of Bandung is as follows:

1. Small contractors have been doing the planning, monitoring or an update of progress, and the control of construction projects as part of its business activities to achieve the owner's expectations.
2. To support the management of the project, small contractors are not using a sophisticated Kakas and expensive, because of the complexity of projects they handle are low with a maximum duration of 7 months with a number of items of work less than 70 pieces.
3. The bar-chart and S-curve is a method to be used in planning the work schedule, but rarely used for its control.
4. The largest obstacle is the availability of human resources, cost and time to the needs of monitoring or an update of progress of work and project management.
5. Microsoft Excel is the most widely used application for project planning activities, but still rarely used for project control. However, Microsoft Excel is the most popular software compared to Microsoft Project and Primavera Project Planner.