Improvement in construction planning effort by small and medium enterprises (SME) in the UK over the last 12 years

Planning provides the roadmap for successful project delivery. In the UK construction industry appropriate planning and programming of construction projects is considered one of the critical factors in determining project success. However, research has shown that the construction industry does not focus enough on planning and programming practices, resulting in an increase of projects delays and exceeding budgets. In 1998 a research conducted by Bigelow (Bigelow, 1998) on why we do not do more planning identified factors such as time and cost constraints, lack of planning knowledge, changes to the original project plan, an existing culture that does not understand the value of planning and customers who do not know what they want. This research has taken the same factors and asked practitioners to respond on why they do not do more planning. The findings suggest that in the last 12 years there has been no significant improvement in attitudes towards planning in SMEs in the UK construction industry. The research carried out is based on a desk study and the use of questionnaires sent to a selection of a 100 SME construction companies