Application Of Walk - Through Management In Cost Control Of Building Decoration Project

With the development of market economy, the decoration industry has become more and more prosperous. In the meantime, the more and more fierce competition among different enterprises has come. Increase of labor cost, rise of material expenses and low-price tender caused by fierce competition has bid farewell to the era of excessive profits of the decoration industry. If the decoration companies want to remain successful in the fierce competition, they must get rid of the extensive management ideal and control costs effectively.Many companies have realized the importance of controlling costs and have adopted relevant measures to seek good means of controlling costs. For instance, performance method is adopted in construction; lean management is used to save costs in construction from the perspective of management; and responsibility system of project manager is employed to maximize his capability, so that his initiative can be mobilized in cost control. These measures can play a certain role in cost control, but cannot solve the problem from its basis. The difficulty of cost control is decided by the characteristics of the decoration industry. Firstly, the highly individualized decoration project requires each one to be constructed according to its own features, rather than unified customization on a large scale. Secondly, the great variety of construction materials and their tremendously different prices result in the difficulty to control the costs. In addition, the sporadic distribution of projects makes it difficult to control. The system of responsibility, right and benefits has not been put into place, which caused the lack of responsibility of cost control of managers.The own features of decoration industry lead to the crucial role of humans in cost control. The capability, consciousness and sense of responsibility of managers to control costs are the key. The thesis centers on management by walking around to illustrate the role of subjective factors of human beings in costs control in the decoration industry.Management by walking around refers to senior managers walk out of the offices regularly to the grassroots level, understand the working condition of staff, and give them incentives. The concept was first raised in In Search of Excellence written by T. J. Peters and R. H., Jr. Waterman, the scholars of management in the US. In 1984, Thomas Peters illustrated management by walking around in details in Passion in Search of Excellence. It was honored as Bible of the Bible by many companies instantly.To apply management by walking around in the decoration industry, and to bring high-level leaders of decoration companies to the spots in order to get acquainted with the working conditions are conducive to inspire the morale of employees. Their mobilized initiative can not only enhance construction quality, but also save costs. In addition, the senior leaders can get to know the reality at grassroots level, discover problems, so as to work out effective regulations and adopt effective measures, in order to finally realize the objective of cost control.This thesis adopts the research measure to combine theory with practice, and applies the concept of management by walking around to decoration industry. The case of applying management by walking around to control cost in specific projects by the author demonstrates the effectiveness of management by walking around in cost control in decoration industry.