Consultant Report on a Construction Company

The Southpointe Construction Company (hypothetical) is a financially sound firm with approximately 300 employees. The company profited from the construction boom in Orange County and surrounding areas in the late1980s and early1990s. The changing character of economic growth in Southern California dictates that Southpointe redirect its emphasis from major project developments to light commercial construction projects. To compete effectively in the light commercial construction market, however, Southpointe must redesign the firm's approach to work. The implementation of work changes into a profitable firm may be expected to meet internal resistance because employees from managers to laborers may see little point in changing a successful system. The paradox of successtoo much of a good thing, however, applies to the Southpointe situation (Elsass, 1993, pp. 8485).

Work changes for Southpointe are considered in eight separate areas. These areas are strategic planning for growth, organizing for the future, operational and financial controls, organizational structure, leadership, motivation, labormanagement relations, and human resource management.

Formal strategic planning is defined as "the process of determining the mission, major objectives, strategies, and policies that govern the acquisition and allocation of resources to achieve organizational aims" (Pearce, Freeman, and Robin

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Operational and Financial Controls The continuing squeezing of profits and the increasing constraints characterizing the availability of resources to business firms demand that effective operational controls be implemented to both preserve liquidity and to promote continued profitability (Dobbins, 1993, pp. 6983). Two key useful control procedures for construction firms to implement in the pursuit of these objectives are capacity resource planning and distribution requirements planning (Dobbins, 1993, pp. 8491). Capacity requirements planning determines how many people, machines, and physical resources are required to perform the tasks of production (Groover, 1992, p. 573). Capacity requirements planning, thus, defines, measures, and adjusts the levels of capacity to assure that the levels are consistent with the production requirements. The factors that affect capacity requirements planning include plant facilities, machines, tooling, personnel work schedules, labor productivity, and a host of other operational activities. The use of the timephased order point concept for independent demand items is called distribution requirements planning (Tersine, 1992, p. 606). Distribution requirements planning is a "push" system
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Approximate Word count = 1999
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)