Total systems intervention: an integrated approach to time, cost and quality management

Historically there has been an attempt within the construction industry to manage projects by attempting to find the most efficient way of managing time and cost with little recognition of the importance of the aspect of quality. This paper proposes that traditional scientific methods have been utilized in order to determine the optimum method of managing time, cost and quality. These mechanistic models have promoted concepts that lack the aspects of viability and culture associated with the human dimension of the management function. This has resulted in a heuristic, trial-and-error approach to the management of projects and the suggestion, both directly and indirectly by participants to the construction industry, that the construction industry is characterized by the ‘endemic crisis’. The paper concludes that the balance between these three factors in conjunction with a consideration of the social/behaviourial aspects, and therefore the endorsement of a total time, quality, cost management system can be achieved via the utilization of an approach to ‘problem-solving’, namely, total systems intervention.