Construction Management: Traditional versus Bureaucratic Methods

This article compares older traditional methods of management in the construction industry with newer, more bureaucratic methods. The theme of the article is that bureaucratic management techniques in construction has an ineffective impact on the construction work. The article outlines the construction work process and traditional styles of construction management. It then examines how the new techniques of computer programming and large staffing have resulted in inefficiencies and irrationalities in attempts to control the construction work process. In the discussion portion of the article the data are related to the notion that human interrelationships are the primary resources in any work organization and, this being especially true for the construction industry, reliance on authoritarian, mechanistic techniques in management results in failure in the attempts of management to control the work process. The author of the article is a construction engineer with twenty-five years experience in the construction industry. He compares his previous experiences as a project manager and project engineer with methods on his present project, a 200 million dollar research and engineering center for one of the major industrial corporations in the United States. The author is currently the chief engineer on his construction project.