What is construction logistics?

Unlike logistics in a factory or a warehouse, construction logistics takes place on a site that changes constantly. Space shrinks, gates move, the parties involved are replaced, and needs differ between groundwork, structural work and fit-out. There is therefore no permanent layout to optimise — the planning has to be redone as the building grows.

The second difference is ownership. In a construction project the work is carried out by many companies at once, with their own orders, their own suppliers and their own schedules. In practice, construction logistics is therefore as much about coordination between parties as it is about transport.

Construction logistics covers several flows that share the same limited space and the same working hours:

• The material flow into the site: ordering, delivery planning, booking, reception and checking.
• The transport flow: the number of transports, their distribution across the day, load utilisation and traffic in the surrounding area.
• Internal flows: moving material from reception to the work face, temporary storage and lifting.
• Shared resources: hoists, cranes, loading zones, trucks and unloading equipment shared between parties.
• The waste flow out of the site: sorting, container placement, collection and reporting.
• Site disposition: gates, haul routes, storage areas, site facilities and how they change during the project.
• Information: who needs to know what, when, and in which channel.
• Follow-up: what actually happened, compared with what was planned.

Logistics rarely appears in the schedule, yet it decides whether the schedule holds. A crew waiting for material stands still regardless of how well the work is otherwise planned, and waiting time cannot be recovered later.

• Productivity: time spent searching for, moving and waiting for material is time not spent building.
• Working environment: congestion, blocked escape routes and heavy manual handling are logistics problems before they become safety problems.
• Cost: extra transports, shrinkage, damaged material and standstill are consequences of flows that are not coordinated.
• Surroundings: the number of transports affects traffic, noise and emissions around the site.
• Quality: material stored incorrectly or moved many times is damaged more often.

In day-to-day work, construction logistics consists of a number of recurring tasks. They are connected: a weakness in one usually shows up as a symptom in another.

1. Logistics planning

The site’s conditions are mapped: gates, haul routes, storage areas, lifting capacity and neighbours. The plan has to describe several phases, because the available space is built away as the project proceeds.

2. Delivery planning and booking

Delivery planning determines when, where and how deliveries should reach the site. In Projsite, the plan is gathered in a shared delivery calendar where bookings can be coordinated with times, unloading points and resources. The purpose is not administration but to prevent several transports competing for the same capacity at once.

3. Resource booking

Hoists, cranes and loading zones are distributed between the parties. In Projsite, resources are booked in a shared plan so availability and resource utilisation can be followed. Without booking, capacity is governed by whoever happens to be first, which is rarely the same as whoever needs it most.

4. Reception and checking

The delivery is received, checked against the order and placed. Deviations caught at reception cost considerably less than those discovered when the material is to be installed.

5. Internal handling

Material is moved from the reception point to the work face. Every extra move costs time and increases the risk of damage, which makes placement at unloading more important than it is often treated as.

6. Waste logistics

Waste is sorted, collected and removed. In Projsite, waste collections can be booked and the waste flow followed through recorded volumes, fractions and transports. Container placement still determines whether sorting works in practice: if containers stand far from the work, fractions get mixed.

7. Communication and coordination

New parties are introduced continuously. Routines that worked in the spring are unknown to the crew that started in the autumn, which makes onboarding a logistics task rather than a one-off effort.

8. Follow-up

Without follow-up, logistics work becomes a series of isolated efforts. Projsite Intelligence compiles the project’s logistics data and approved metrics over time, helping the project distinguish isolated deviations from recurring patterns — and move from firefighting to changing a routine.

• Read more about delivery planning in Projsitearrow_forward
• Read more about resource bookingarrow_forward

The problems in construction logistics are remarkably similar between projects, and they have more to do with coordination than with transport.

When flows are registered in Projsite, they can be followed over time. Several metrics describe the planning behind deliveries: how much of the flow is booked, how far ahead bookings are made and how well the project’s routines are followed.

A metric is useful when it leads to a question that can be answered. A figure nobody acts on is administration.

What is the difference between construction logistics and ordinary logistics?

Ordinary logistics usually starts from a fixed facility and a single organisation. Construction logistics takes place on a site that changes shape during the project and is shared by many companies with their own orders and schedules. Coordination between the parties is therefore a larger part of the work.

Who is responsible for construction logistics in a project?

Responsibility normally sits with the main contractor or a designated logistics manager, but execution is shared: each subcontractor controls their own orders. This is why agreed routines and follow-up are needed — no single party can control the flow alone.

When in a project should logistics be planned?

Early enough that the conditions can still be influenced. Gates, storage areas and lifting capacity are hard to change once production has started, whereas booking routines can be introduced along the way.

Do small projects need construction logistics?

The need follows available space and the number of parties more than the size of the project. A small project on a cramped inner-city plot with many subcontractors can face bigger logistics challenges than a large project with plenty of room.

What is just-in-time in a construction context?

Material arriving close to the time it is to be installed, rather than being stored on site. It reduces the need for storage areas and the risk of damage, but it requires lead time and reliable delivery times — otherwise the risk simply moves from storage to standstill.

Projsite is a construction logistics platform where deliveries, shared resources and waste collections are booked in one place. Because the flows are registered continuously, a project can follow up on its logistics afterwards instead of relying on recollection.

• See the platformarrow_forward
• Follow-up in Projsite Intelligencearrow_forward