Internal assessment of organizational management practices for small to medium size general contractors in Atlantic Canada

Abstract

Benchmarking and organizational assessment m the Canadian construction industry are relatively well known concepts but are not applied as often as they should be. When applied at the organizational level, these principles can provide valuable insight into the state of management practices within an enterprise. Once key practices are assessed, results can be further analyzed and deficient areas can be reviewed for impact on organizational performance. The end objective in this process is for companies to determine which practices are most important and to focus on improving these practices moving forward. The barrier in this process is that organizations currently lack the ability to assess and in turn evaluate the results in a meaningful manner. This report demonstrates how a defined assessment tool can be used to collect data. Once collected this information can be used to evaluate management practices and can further be used to determine risk exposure given a set of project parameters. To demonstrate the suggested concepts, a sample organization is surveyed and a case study project is presented. The results demonstrate that any firm can use a defined assessment tool and apply basic risk management principles to facilitate overall organizational improvement.