Classification of Construction Projects 

Construction Industry Sectors

The facility needs of society are large and diverse. People need places to live, worship, work, health care, shops, educate, exercise, vacation, and generally enjoy life. From an organizational perspective, all these needs are often collectively referred to as the built environment. Many other industries contribute to the creation of the built environment, but construction ultimately provides it.

Any Civil, Electrical or Mechanical Engineer is unable to complete large projects individually. Engineers, Project managers or construction managers has to interact and co-ordinate with various field of specializations depending upon the type of the project.

For example, the construction of petroleum, refinery involves the complex interaction with chemical engineer, mechanical engineer, electrical engineers, Process engineers, IT engineers, Safety engineers etc.

Based on co-ordination and interaction with other disciplines, Construction projects can be grouped as follows.
◆ Residential Buildings
◆ Commercial Buildings
◆ Heavy Civil Infrastructure Development
◆ Industrial Construction
◆ Environmental Construction
Each sector is characterized by different means, methods and building materials. Equipment types, structural framework types, manufacturers, suppliers, specialized contractors and even funding sources vary by sector.

For example, structural steel framing, steel construction, and steel fabrication are all common components in the commercial sector, but not in the residential sector. 

On the other hand, timber frame construction, rough joinery and lumber are common parts of the residential sector, but not the commercial sector of industry.
Each sector requires specific expertise and familiarity to optimize construction and management operations. Therefore, the majority of builders focus only on one sector or market of the industry. 

1. Residential Building

Residential construction fulfils the housing needs of society. Home construction can take many forms, including single-family homes, apartments, condominiums, townhouses, and prefabricated units such as modular and prefabricated homes.
Residential construction is usually financed by individuals or property developers for their own use or sale. 
Projects are designed by an architect, but many of custom made housing plans are available in catalogues and plan books. In some cases, based on requirement Contractor can provide the design to the customer.

Engineering is rarely required and the and construction techniques are relatively straightforward and simple.

 A typical residential housing project duration is 3-6 months. Even a high-end custom home can be built in less than a year. 

Large production builders working on to create communities of 50 to 1000 or more homes in one location can extend the projects over several years.

In any country building projects accounts for around 60 to 70 percent of construction projects. Building construction in is highly labour –intensive. Most of the manpower employed for building projects are semi-skilled and untrained. Design and construction phase of these projects are governed by many local as well as general laws, such as municipal laws, building laws etc.

Means and Methods

Residential projects are relatively low tech in terms of the means and methods required to design and construct.
The Residential construction business is relatively easy to start and operate. However, many of the companies are very small and therefore have a high risk of default. A bad job can drive a contractor out of business in a hurry.

However, large companies, generating annual revenues and profits that exceed many large commercial builders. They handle all aspects of building construction, from land acquisition to financing, and are often publicly owned and listed on stock market.

Characteristics

Residential Construction business Whether small or large publicly owned enterprise, the market has certain characteristics that anyone considering a career in the construction industry should understand. 

Clients are typically single families with individual personalities. If you’re not a social person, this probably isn’t the sector for you. Homebuyers spend their personal funds on these projects. As a site manager, you are in direct contact with clients on a regular basis. Experience every emotion and temperament associated with the home-buying audience. There is a lot of personal service and holding you need.

While many construction professionals delight in this aspect of their business and strive to address all the details and concerns an owner may have regarding the construction process, others prefer such intimacy.

Residential Construction firms come in all sizes. Some limit their service area to the local market, others expand their operations regionally or nationally, while others build abroad in Europe and South America.

It requires extensive knowledge. Architecture is just one facet of the Residential Building business firms. Working in this segment of the industry requires an understanding of sales, marketing, finance, real estate development, licensing, building codes, purchasing, construction operations, customer service, and warranties. 

2. Commercial Building

This industrial sector primarily serves the needs of trade, commerce and authorities and accounts for about one-third of the total construction market.

This category includes banks, schools, office buildings, hotels, shopping malls, religious buildings (Mosque/ Church/ Temple etc), cricket, football or baseball stadiums, theaters, universities, amusement parks, hospitals, courts, government buildings, and other places where people gather.

These projects range in size from small shops to large modern shopping malls. Construction costs are significantly higher than residential construction projects, and project duration is significantly longer. It’s not uncommon for commercial projects to take three or more years.
Funding for this type of construction projects can take the form of private, public, or dedicated public-private partnerships. 

Commercial construction companies are typically categorized by financial strength. For example, companies with annual sales of less than $10 million are categorized as small contractors, while large commercial contractors do more than $250 million in work annually. Of course, all are related to a specific market. What is considered a large business in Nebraska can easily be classified as a small business in California.
Commercial projects are very large and difficult to develop expertise in all areas. For example, a Hospital Project required highly specialized systems hence the contractors to execute such project must have expertise in such projects. As such, it is not uncommon for commercial builders to focus on only a few building types.
Commercial projects are usually designed by architects. Building systems can be complex, and a variety of specialist engineers are employed to assist architects with their electrical, mechanical and structural designs.

Additional consultants may be called upon for special project requirements. For example, a sound and acoustic engineer might work on a concert hall project, but not bring it to the retail facility.

Means and Methods

Commercial construction tends to be much more technically complex than residential construction. 

The construction of commercial buildings uses special construction methods and requires specially trained technicians. 

The use of concrete casting beds, cofferdams, and slipforms are common techniques in commercial construction but are rarely used in residential construction.

the need for equipment in commercial construction has grown significantly. Cranes are a common sight on most commercial projects, along with pile drivers, welders, and concrete pumps.
As a construction manager in commercial construction, you have to work with a large number of professional contractors and workers employed in a variety of industries. Labor management aspects of commercial construction can be complex and require specific knowledge of labor law and collective bargaining.

Primary Materials

Across the downtown area, you’ll find various combinations of the three basic building materials associated with commercial architecture: steel, concrete, and glass. These three materials make up the primary materials used in commercial construction. 

A commercial building consists of some kind of building frame or structure and an outer cladding that covers the frame. Cladding materials are usually applied as curtain walls made of brick, stone, concrete, aluminium, steel or glass or as external insulation panels. In some cases, reinforced concrete masonry (RCM) is the material of choice for commercial buildings with limited height.
Commercial building frames are designed to withstand specific loads and conditions. Architects and engineers decide whether a steel or reinforced concrete frame is best for a building. Glass is a common cladding material for commercial buildings, but other materials are available for this purpose. In some cases, the entire building frame and cladding is concrete. Wood is rarely used in commercial buildings due to the high fire resistance building standards required by the Building Standards Act.
Most commercial buildings have flat roofs covered with gravel-ballasted bituminous membranes or some type of vinyl or rubber. Commercial buildings with pitched roofs are often covered with prefabricated metal roofs.

Characteristics

In contrast to the residential sector, commercial buildings are typically funded by corporations, authorities or governments. Personal money is irrelevant, and owners are usually less busy with day-to-day construction. However, they are interested in sticking to the schedule and starting operations as soon as possible.
Residential construction requires a thorough understanding of the residential building business, while commercial construction requires a deep understanding of construction processes and techniques. Commercial contractors are rarely involved in the sales, marketing, or land acquisition component of a project.

3.Heavy Civil Construction

This Heavy Civil Construction sector has a tremendous impact on society as a whole. The heavy industry sector, often referred to as horizontal construction, includes roads, bridges, tunnels, dams, airports and railways. Basically, all work related to infrastructure, transportation, communication belongs to the heavy construction Industry. 

As in the industrial sector, large-scale civil engineering projects are complex, typically costly undertakings requiring specialized engineering know-how. This market is huge and getting bigger every day. There is a great need for the construction and reconstruction of roads, airports, sewage treatment plants and bridges in developing countries.
These projects are typically designed by civil engineers and often the construction management team also has a strong background in civil engineering. Heavy construction companies are generally very large businesses and can offer opportunities both nationally and internationally. However, entering the industrial heavyweight private sector is difficult as it requires huge capital expenditures, not to mention the expertise required to succeed.

In any country heavy engineering construction accounts for around 25-30 percent of total construction.

Construction of these projects is carried out by reputed firms and mostly financed by government or financial institutes. In major projects the technical assistance is carried out by other countries as well, huge projects can be joint venture of two or three companies.

Means and Methods

Very few industries are involved in heavy civil engineering compared to the other three sectors. 

Equipment and equipment operators play a major role in heavy construction project work. 

Heavy construction companies make huge investments in equipment’s.

Equipment’s can earthmovers, excavators, scrapers, cranes and trucks etc.

Primary Materials

Asphalt, gravel, concrete, steel and earth are the main materials used in heavy civil engineering. Most of us have seen highway crews lay new asphalt on highways and roads. Before they put the hot asphalt in and rolled out the pavement, they cleared heaps of gravel and rock dust.
Other heavy construction projects such as bridges and dams use user of large amounts of concrete and steel. For example, a dam project may require the construction of a concrete mixing plant directly on site to accommodate the required amount of concrete.

Characteristics

These projects are usually publicly funded and usually of long-term duration.

 Miles of roads can take years to build. It is not uncommon for people working in this market segment to temporarily move to a project location. They may also have to stay in remote areas for long periods of time. However, anyone interested in heavy machinery, tractors and excavators will be drawn to this area. This market sector is the least vulnerable to economic fluctuations and can offer a reasonable degree of job security.

4. Industrial Construction

The industry is highly specialized and requires companies with extensive resources and significant construction and engineering know-how. The number of qualified contractors to work in the industrial sector is limited. The types of projects included in this category are defined primarily by the production activities that take place within the facility. Manufacturing plants, power plants, oil refineries, pipelines, steel mills and chemical processing plants are examples of industrial construction projects.

In any country industrial projects accounts for only 10 percent of the total construction projects, but it requires highest level of engineering expertise from various engineering disciplines, such as chemical, mechanical, electrical, IT, safety and process industry.

Industrial construction is dominated by skilled and specialized professionals and skilled labour as compared to heavy engineering.

Means and Methods

Industrial buildings are often kept very simple in their exterior design. The success of an industrial project usually depends on how well the plant performs against its production goals.

 In industrial construction, the process of shell construction is a real structural challenge. Unlike residential and commercial facilities, installation of equipment is a large part of the industrial construction process. What really matters here are the huge boilers, reactors and processing equipment that must be installed according to strict quality standards and local rules and regulations.

Primary Materials

Building materials used in industrial construction are very similar to commercial construction. The main components are steel, concrete and reinforced concrete. These buildings often house special equipment, machinery, or process piping, and the internal design is usually very sober to facilitate maintenance. Often concrete or log walls are simply painted, concrete floors are left unfinished, ceiling coatings are not applied, and exposed pipes and ducts are left in full view. In some cases, special materials such as glass tubes and heat-sensitive tiles can be used when constructing industrial buildings.

Characteristics

This industrial sector deals with the construction of mega-plants that take years to complete. In some cases, the construction period of the project may be five to ten years, and it is very likely that the construction management team will have to relocate. These projects are typically funded by private sources and contract prices are generally high. 

There are many international opportunities in industrial construction, and those looking for opportunities to travel abroad will most likely find it in this area.
Industrial projects can be remote and even lack modern conveniences. Depending on the type of facility, advanced security clearances and regulatory oversight may be required. A lack of communication can have serious consequences, so it is very important that engineers and site managers work closely together on these projects.

5. Environmental Construction

While some may lump environmental construction into the heavy construction category, it stands on its own, especially given the market share gains the sector is currently experiencing and likely to see for some time in the future. In general, this industrial sector includes

projects that improve the environment, maintain public health, and contribute to the quality of life in the community.

Think clean water, sewers, and waste disposal. While these projects may seem unattractive at first glance, they actually represent one of the industry’s most important sectors, requiring significant investment to sustain communities.
This sector builds the conveyor systems, treatment plants and operational facilities necessary to collect, treat, recover and distribute water. Build desalination plants, clean up hazardous sites, and perform other ecological tasks such as managing and restoring watersheds and wetlands.

Means and Methods

Environmental projects typically involve a lot of earthwork and field work, along with trenching and piping, asphalt removal and installation, tunnelling, blasting, and other excavation methods. However, many environmental projects require buildings or structures to house specialized instrumentation, monitoring equipment, incinerators, and process piping to operate the system. Therefore, the same means and methods are used in this area as in typical industrial or commercial construction. These facilities require foundations, siding, windows, doors, roofs and surfaces, as well as mechanical and electrical systems. These ancillary buildings may not be as flashy as a bank or museum, but they should provide a suitable working environment for the people who run the facility.

Primary Materials

Environmental projects often consist of a combination of commercial, industrial and heavy construction materials. However, in addition to soil, gravel, asphalt, concrete, rebar, steel and piping, we also need specialized materials such as pumps, valves, filters, membranes and aerators. 

Instrumentations and controls are also part of the mix in these projects. These factors are an important part of the equation because a facility isn’t really very useful if it can’t operate and perform as planned.

Site managers with technical backgrounds often need to be familiar with these items and their operation so that they can manage procurement, delivery, installation, and possibly post-installation performance.

Characteristics

These are the public facility projects hence the construction manager needs to spend a significant amount of time dealing with government and regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

 Working in this industry one must not only be familiar with design tools, methods and controls, but must also be familiar with the laws, especially the laws and regulations dealing with public health and the environment. 

In such projects engineers or construction managers are working with chemists, biologists, ecologists, and other scientists to study the actual qualities of water, soil, and other materials that flow and interact with the system under construction.  There are many opportunities in this industry to extend knowledge and learning beyond construction. In US and other parts of the world these are the state funded projects and life expectancy of a typical system is about over 50 years.