The Role of Project Management in Improving Efficiency of Modern Construction Projects

Modern construction projects continue to suffer from chronic cost overruns, schedule delays, and coordination failures, particularly as the industry shifts toward prefabrication and engineered-timber systems such as glue-laminated timber (Glulam). This paper examines how structured project management (PM) practices improve efficiency across the design–manufacture–assembly continuum of contemporary construction, with particular attention to prefabricated housing delivery. Building on a review of thirty peer-reviewed sources spanning agile and lean methodologies, Building Information Modeling (BIM), digital twins, the Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI) in project controls, the paper proposes an original analytical instrument - the Modular Project Efficiency Index (MPEI) - that quantifies PM performance across three weighted dimensions: Schedule Compression, Cost Variance Control, and Coordination Density. Weights are derived through an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and stress-tested with a sensitivity analysis. Applied illustratively to a prefabricated Glulam housing delivery model, the MPEI demonstrates that integrated PM practices can compress schedules by up to 35–45% and reduce cost variance relative to conventional site-built construction. The paper concludes that PM is not a peripheral administrative function but the central mechanism through which prefabrication technologies translate into measurable efficiency gains, and it offers the MPEI as a transferable diagnostic tool for practitioners scaling modular housing delivery.