Republic of the Philippines

PHINMA Araullo University

Cabanatuan City

BES 047: ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

CASE STUDY NO.2

R. E. CONSTRUCTION:
It's Now or Never

Submitted by:

Pascua, Francis Lyn Lei P.

(BSCE2-MAIN2)
Case 2. R. E. CONSTRUCTION: It's Now or Never

When Engineer Romeo Estabillo finished his Civil Engineering

course at Mapua Institute of Technology, he took the board
examination and passed it in 1981. Wanting to start
independently, he went back to his hometown (Santiago City) to
organize his own construction firm. In his first few years of
operation, he accepted contracts for the construction of
residential houses. As he gained experience, his clients grew in
number, and even the most prominent persons in the province of
Isabela availed of his services.

At the start, he hired two assistants to help him in his daily

routine as a contractor. One of the two assistants, Mr. Silvino
Santiago, was a third year-civil engineering student who had
stopped schooling due to financial difficulties. His main task
was as draftsman. His duty was to produce all documents relating
to the physical requirements of the various contracts entered
into by his boss. Among these documents are the building plan,
specifications, bill of materials, building permit, etc. His
additional duty was to assist Engineer Estabillo in supervising
the foremen and workers at the various construction sites.

The second assistant, Mr. Romulo Mamaril, was assigned to

coordinate purchasing, bookkeeping, and other related
administrative activities.

At the third year of operations, Engineer Estabillo was already

directing operations in his newly constructed office inside his
residential compound. By this time, two more female employees
were hired to assist in the various tasks performed in the
office.

By 1994, Engineer Estabillo reviewed his company's payroll. It

indicated that he has employ six full-time civil engineers, two
draftsmen, ten administrative personnel, one messenger and one
security guard. The foremen and laborers working at the various
projects were contractual.

By June 1996, Engineer Estabillo felt that business was

continuously growing, so he will have to secure the services of
four additional civil engineers on a full-time basis. As he was
directly supervising all operations, he now feels that he may not
be able to perform his functions effectively if he will push
through with the plan. He wants to make a decision, but he is
apprehensive. He thinks operations are now more complex that
decision-making must be a little scientific. With this thought,
he pondered on how he will go about solving the problem.

Question: If you are Engr. Estabillo, what will be your action to

solve your problem? How you will implement this action?

INTRODUCTION: Provide a brief narrative about the case study,

summarizing the key points.

BODY: Include the interviewee's response in the question along

with their name, company position, and company address. Provide a
narrative based on your analysis of the answer given by the
interviewee.

CONCLUSION: Conclude with a narrative that reflects the overall

context and ideas presented in the interviewee’s response, along
with your analysis.
 Mr. Estabillo, the engineer behind the venture, has seen his
business grow over the years, therefore requires change in the
management system. Formerly handling every operation in the
business, a rapid growth in the business comes with another set
of unique problem of how to expand as an enterprise while keeping
up with standard quality and efficiency in its service delivery.
The main problem here is searching for a solution to the
increased significance of the company’s work and the
corresponding enhancement of its structural complexity, which in
turn clicked the need for the formation of a unified system of
decision-making, delegation, and overall management.

Interview with Engineer Cristy Malasan Manahan from the

Department of Engineering, Sumacab Campus NEUST College of
Engineering contributed to explaining how Engineer Estabillo
could deal with the issues resulting from the company’s
development. According to Engineer Manahan, it is crucial to
decentralize assignments, more so, assigning each construction
project to a senior engineer and assigning them workers on site
to oversee. This would also create time for Engineer Estabillo to
plan and strategize for future direction of the company.
Furthermore, Engineer Manahan said of coming up with a full-time
project manager to manage the operations of the construction
sites; a way of achieving timely delivery of projects, quality
projects and affordable projects.

In addition, Engineer Manahan proposed office and

construction sites to use a project management tool for better
communication. This software would monitor the performance of
projects, organize resources, and keep everyone up to date, so no
corners can be cut or anything missed the team might see. To
further increase efficiency, Engineer Manahan even suggested
hiring civil engineers with specializations in a certain field
such as structural design or cost estimating and some office
clerks who will be in charge of buying the materials, accounting
and other clerical work. With the skills that these professionals
have acquired, Engineer Estabillo would be in a position to solve
the increasing needs of the firm as well as ensure that all the
departments are running.

Essential aspects of delegation elicit an important response

from engineer Cristy Manahan to address the challenges of a
growing business. The actions made to allocate certain duties to
other engineers and the hiring of a project manager also helped
Engineer Estabillo perform business development to make certain
that Corp stays on an upward growth and trajectory with standard
quality. Besides, successful adoption of project management
software and recruitment of employees with specific experience
would enhance the effectiveness of process coordination and
enhance employ the best number of resources to the process. By
addressing the problem of managing an ever-growing organization,
this approach would indeed bring sustainable development of the
company.