Fundamentals of Construction Management - FE Civil Exam

Define a project as a temporary, unique endeavor; a program links related projects toward a common goal, and a portfolio groups programs toward a strategic objective.

Identify the key parties in construction projects—owner, engineer, project management consultant, contractor, and subcontractors—and outline their roles, responsibilities, and interactions across feasibility, budgeting, design, contracts, and project delivery methods.

Explore construction documents across the project life cycle, including the project charter, project management plan, bid documents, design drawings, bill of quantities, technical specifications, contracts, and as-built drawings.

Explore the six project delivery methods—force account, design-bid-build, design-build, multiple prime, construction management, turnkey—and the owner, engineer, contractor, and subcontractor roles.

Understand the tendering stage from shortlisting bids to technical and commercial evaluation. Compare direct order, open tender, and limited tender and their effects on cost, competition, and quality.

Examine fixed price, cost reimbursable, and time and materials contracts, including firm fixed price, incentive fees, target price, and cost plus options, focusing on risk and change orders.

Review quiz solutions on project portfolio management, tendering methods, and contract types, including direct order, limited tender, fixed cost, design-build, and cost-plus arrangements.

Compare waterfall and agile project life cycles, outlining their phases from requirements to maintenance, and explain why waterfall suits construction while agile favors software through rigid versus iterative approaches.

Understand the waterfall lifecycle with initiation to closing, overlapping phases, and the Pdca cycle guiding planning, execution, monitoring, and replanning across ten knowledge areas.

Identify the PMBoK five project stages and contrast agile with predictive (waterfall) life cycles. Note initiation creates the project charter, while monitoring and control apply checks and corrective actions.

work breakdown structure (wbs) divides a project into smaller components to estimate duration and resources and to manage work at site via work packages and sequencing.

Explore how to sequence construction activities by applying finish-to-start, finish-to-finish, start-to-start, and start-to-finish relations, and use lead, lag, float, and the critical path to manage overlap and schedule.

Develop a project schedule with Gantt charts, MS Project, and the critical path method; analyze activities on arrows and nodes, durations, dependencies, and floats.

Explore quiz solutions on construction management basics, including work breakdown structure, activity relationships (finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish), lag and lead times, and critical path calculations.

Apply earned value analysis to monitor project progress and cost, using planned value, earned value, and actual cost to assess schedule and budget variances and forecast cost at completion.

Learn the differences between crashing and fast-tracking to compress schedules on the critical path. Identify when to apply each method and understand their cost and risk implications.

Review quiz questions on schedule compression methods, including fast tracking and crashing, and analyze cost and schedule performance metrics like CPI, SPI, and EAC.

Explore schedule and cost estimation techniques: analogous, parametric, three points, and bottom-up, while connecting duration, resources, and budget, guided by the risk register and reserves.

Explore earthwork estimation by analyzing soil components: solid particles, water, and air content; and how bank cubic yard, loose cubic yard, and compacted cubic yard relate through swelling and shrinkage.

Learn how construction safety ensures a healthy and safe work environment through education, project understanding, and a hierarchy of control, with OSHA standards guiding hazard identification, training, and safety management.

Compare cost estimation techniques for urgent rough estimates—analogous, parametric, bottom-up—then apply triangular and beta methods for duration, and note PPE and excavation trip basics.