Engineering and Architecture Projects: Phases, Costs, and Regulations

Posted on Jan 15, 2025 in Business Administration and Management (BAM)

Topic 1: Project Definition and Types

A project, in engineering and architecture, is a set of documents, calculations, and drawings designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of how a structure or system should be built and its associated costs.

Types of Projects

  • Engineering (feasibility studies, preliminary design, project):
    • Settlement: Describes what is executed.
    • Modified: Based on a prior project that requires changes. Supplementary work units are distinct from the original.
  • Urban Planning: Provides planning and development guidelines.
  • Specific Tasks: Includes topographic measurements, assessments, calculations, reports, surveys, and arbitration.

Topic 2: Project Phases and Stakeholders

Phases

  1. Commissioning and Procurement
  2. Drafting
  3. Prosecution and Licensing
  4. Construction and Installation
  5. Operation and Maintenance

Stakeholders

  • The Property: Can be government entities, autonomous bodies (public entities with legal personality and their own assets, relying on a ministry), corporate public entities (public bodies with personality, their own budget, and management autonomy), private companies, institutions, or individuals.
  • The Drafting Team: Offers and develops the project.
  • Service Organizations: Professionals and companies providing specialized studies to support the drafting team.
  • Handling Bodies: Grant permissions for the commencement of works.
  • Execution Units: Responsible for construction.
  • Operating Entities: Companies engaged in the operation and maintenance of the completed project.

Topic 3: Property and Bidding Terms

Property: Refers to the entity that establishes the needs and goals to be met by the project.

Bidding Terms: Documents containing all the financial, administrative, and technical requirements set by the property for a particular project.

Topic 4: Legislation and Regulations

European Parliament Legislation: These policies are above national constitutions and European law.

Parliament

  1. Organic Law: Develops fundamental rights and civil liberties. Requires a congressional majority.
  2. Ordinary Law: Develops specific topics. Adopted by a simple majority in Congress.
  3. Base Law: Passed by Parliament to the government, which then develops the substance of the established bases through a legislative decree.

Government

  1. Decree-Law: A rule of law issued as a matter of urgency. It produces the same effect without prior parliamentary control, but it is subject to control 30 days later for validation.
  2. Royal Legislative Decrees: Rules issued under the laws of bases to create a law. The government can also use them to compile previous laws.

Regulatory Bodies

  1. Orders: Ministerial orders issued by a minister, without the force of law.
  2. Resolutions: Established by secretaries of state, containing notices, approvals, specifications, etc.

Technical Provisions

  1. Instructions: General and compulsory for public and private projects.
  2. PPTP (Pliego de Prescripciones Técnicas Particulares): Required for projects under the Administration’s competence that have been published.
  3. Standards: Some are mandatory and approved by Royal Decree (RD), while others are not. There are standardization rules, and normalization is mandatory.
  4. Recommendations: Technical provisions with instructional features but are not required.
  5. Official Collections: Provide a range of solutions, allowing the project author to choose one without needing to justify every estimate, though they must justify the chosen solution.

Topic 5: Sources of Information and Preliminary Studies

Sources of Information

  1. General: Literature, projects, rules.
  2. Specific for Drafting Projects: Soil analysis, groundwater analysis, analysis of the physical environment, analysis of the human environment.

Preliminary Studies

  1. Mapping Project Elaboration: Classical topography, photogrammetry.
  2. Geotechnical Report Elaboration:
  • Field work sampling (altered and unaltered).
  • Laboratory tests (identification and status of the land).
  • Report writing (report, plans, and economic assessment of the measures).

Topic 6: Costs, Benefits, and Financial Analysis

Costs

  1. Primary: Borne by the property.
  • Investment costs.
  • Preparation costs.
  • Initial settlement costs.
  • Operation costs (labor, consumption), likely to be regular.
Secondary: Borne by the community.
  • Quantitative: Measurable and translatable into monetary terms.
  • Qualitative: Subjective evaluation (e.g., population transfer, environmental impact).

Benefits

  1. Primary: Levied by the property on goods sold for services from the project.
  2. Secondary: Perceived by the community.

Financial and Economic Profitability

  • Financial Profitability: Confined to the property and used to assess private investment.
  • Economic Profitability: Used to assess public investment.
  • Net Present Value (NPV): Calculates the present value of all benefits minus costs over a specific study period.
  • Internal Rate of Return (IRR): The discount rate that makes the NPV equal to zero.
  • Shadow Prices: Prices that reflect opportunity costs, not market prices.