A [40 MARKS] Read the case study below and answer ALL the questions that follow. Optimisation of resource management in construction projects: A big data approach Resource management is one of the key factors for achieving project success, which includes the management of project teams, labour and plant and equipment needed to deliver the project. This study aims to identify challenges facing resource management in the UK construction industry and outline solutions proposed through focus group discussion with industrial experts. The results show that seven key factors affect resource management, most of which are due to poor data management processes and the practice of having data in silos. A resource is anything that contributes to the completion of project tasks, and it includes the project manager, skilled labourers, and equipment such as plant and fleet. Resources are major contributors to project success because each project task must have sufficient and adequate resources allocated for the activity to finish to time and within budget (Nigaragu, 2012). The construction industry is riddled with problems such as increase in labour prices, shortage of skilled labour and stagnant productivity (Leeds, 2016). Besides, Fletcher (2017) argues that Brexit threatens the flux of skilled labour into the UK which adds pressure onto the already constrained labour market. These problems impact project performance by causing time delays, cost overrun and profit margin erosion. Additionally, Banaitiene and Banaitis (2012) reported that in recent years, project-based companies have found it more challenging to achieve the estimated profit margins on projects which are the core source of provision of cash flow. Consequently, these organisations do not have the cash flexibility to invest in huge, expensive digital innovations to solve the causes of margin erosion (Leeds, 2016). However, a solution to manage the limited resource effectively and efficiently is unavoidable. There are two parts to resource management; resource allocation and resource levelling (Nagaraju et al., 2012). Resource allocation is concerned with the supply of the demanded resource while resource levelling is concerned with reducing the fluctuations in peaks and troughs in a resource profile and how to minimise scenarios of under and over allocations. Both scenarios would have to consider the skillsets needed, the availability and the workload of the resources (Bautista-Arredondo et al. 2008). Resource allocation to a project is dependent on the nature of the project and some key attributes. Firstly, it is essential that the complexity of the project is understood and a robust methodology is developed for appropriate delivery. Then, a detailed project plan/schedule is developed outlining all the activities singularly with the duration each activity should take. Following the successful execution of these steps, a resource schedule is created that lists the details of the required resource per activity. Subsequently, the productivity of each resource type is used to calculate the quantities of human resource and equipment needed to safely deliver a project to the required standard. These schedules are then used to prepare an estimate that is sent to the client and serve as baseline data for allocating resource during the delivery phase (Nagaragu 2012). Resource data is a fraction of the huge amount of data produced across a projects lifecycle which is from project development (estimate/ tendering) to project delivery. In addition to historical data, there is an increase in the generation of real-time data with the adoption of emerging technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, Building Information Modelling (BIM), blockchain and laser scanning (Mukherjee and Shaw, 2016) within the construction industry. The optimal solution to the challenges facing resource management would be a tool that can analyse relevant real-time and offline data from different domains. The tool must consider some key factors such as the skillsets needed, the resource available and resource workload (Bautista-Arredondo et al., 2008). Therefore, efficient resource management requires the ability to produce insight from large amount of data. The credibility of the insight is dependent on the reliability of the data that underpins it. 2 DN Fortunately, there is an improved level of data assurance during construction processes through the introduction of proper naming conventions and guides to the management of data maturity with the introduction of BIM (Bryde et al., 2013). Based on the identified gap in knowledge, this study seeks to bring to the fore challenges facing resource management in the UK construction industry and to propose solutions to address them. Understanding how to overcome current resource management challenges will open new doors to unlocking insights within the extensive resource-related data available in the construction industry. The industry is rife with several resource management software for project scheduling, resource scheduling and resource allocation. Microsoft Project leads the market with over 22 million users (Schwalbe, 2015). Besides, cloud-based project management tools (such as Asana, LiquidPlanner, JIRA, Zoho projects, Trello, Monday.com, Freshdesk, slack) are becoming popular. The goal of these project management tools is to make project management more efficient through accurate time, cost and resource scheduling. However, a major limitation of these tools is that they do not perform resource allocation and levelling across multiple projects with overlapping resources to know how resources correlate with each other and to show how resource might be in demand or waste (Biafore, 2013). Also, these tools do not have the potential to provide real-time updates on project progress. Therefore, live updates of information about resources are through manual input which leads to time wastage and subjects the process to error. Another limitation is that these tools do not use historical data from previous projects to optimise the delivery of projects and to proactively solve problems. A common practice in the industry is the use of Microsoft Excel to keep track of all resource type, quantities, and current allocations. It is easier to see the resource demand per project and initial allocations for each demand. By using functions within excel, it is also possible to see the overall resource available at a given time. However, to enable these functionalities within excel, summarised versions of the original timeline are manually created within excel or the project plans are copied from Microsoft Project or Primavera into excel. The lack of integration between these systems mean that to get live resource information resource managers have an added task of updating the Excel version as well as other versions when a project schedule changes; which is often not done. Therefore, resource levelling analysis cannot be done with high accuracy and with minimal manual intervention. Besides, the manual admin works are at a cost to the company. Optimising resource management has been trialled with different techniques such as integer programming (Easa, 1989), branch and bound, dynamic programming, genetic algorithm (Hegazy, 1999) and hybrid genetic algorithm (Valls, 2013). However, these approaches have several limitations. The techniques have only considered situations where there are resource constraints but the project duration is fixed or scenarios where there are unlimited resources but several changes to the project. They do not consider real-time changes to variables nor do they perform predictions based on previous data. Source: Kusimo, H., Oyedele, L., Akinade, O., Oyedele, A., Abioye, S., Agboola, A. and Mohammed-Yakub, N. (2019), "Optimisation of resource management in construction projects: a big data approach", World Journal of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp. 82-93. QUESTION 1 (40 Marks) 1.1 Derive a definition of the term project resources by merging the theory and evidence from the article case study. (4 marks) 1.2 Deliberate on the three main characteristics that resources can be broken into? (6 marks) 1.3 The case study mentions smoothed resources which are a result of resource smoothing. Discuss the resource smoothing process that a project manager would undertake to smooth a resource (10 marks) 3 DN 1.4 Discuss the various resource smoothing options that a project manager can utilise to smooth resources in construction projects? (10 marks) 1.5 Tabulate the underlying differences between resource smoothing and resource levelling. (10 marks) SECTION B [60 MARKS] Answer ANY THREE (3) questions in this section. QUESTION 2 (20 Marks) Discuss the common mistakes that occur in resource management and make recommendations to resolve them. QUESTION 3 (20 Marks) Discuss other potential methods for resolving resource allocation challenges in a multi-project environment. QUESTION 4 (20 Marks) For any project, planning is the key stepping stone to success. For many projects that fail around the world, failure is attributed to lack of detailed planning. In some instances, planning is done but not to the level of detail required. Part of the planning involves the creation of motivated teams. Discuss FIVE (5) tools and techniques that you can use to enhance team development. QUESTION 5 (20 Marks) As a result of companies being constantly in need of outsourcing or contracting significant segments of project work to other companies, there arises a need to establish mutually beneficial relationships with the people from different organizations as conflicts in such situations become inevitable. Such conflicts often create costly delays impacting the project negatively. One approach to resolving conflict is to use project partnering as an effective way to engage both the project owner and contractors. Critically discuss how partnering can be used strategically to facilitate the relationship between the parties