Construction has been one of the largest growing industries in the world’s economy.
The advancements are impressive but the challenges remain: competition, budget overruns, delivery delays, bad forecasting, and more. Managers and supervisors often struggle to keep people operating safely, and a project running on budget.
A way to improve this is to optimize productivity. You need to define construction productivity, understand what factors affect it, and identify the strategies that can help you succeed. Let’s unpack it all.
Contents:
Construction Productivity Definition
Construction productivity is the ratio of output to input in construction projects. It measures how well resources like labor, materials, and equipment are used to produce a finished project within a specified timeframe.
Unlike other industries, construction productivity can be more complex to measure due to the unique challenges, environments, and scopes. Standardization is also difficult to achieve. But the more you understand the nature of your processes, the more flexibility you have to improve them.
Importance of Construction Productivity
Why is construction productivity so crucial?
Simply put, high productivity in construction leads to cost savings, faster project completion, and higher quality outputs.
Economically, it reduces waste and maximizes resource use so that you can have higher profits and manage construction projects better. Competitively, companies that consistently perform well can build a stronger reputation and secure more contracts.
Additionally, when you improve the productivity of construction workers, it boosts morale and job satisfaction. High productivity also ensures that projects stay on schedule, which is vital for client satisfaction and the long-term success.
To illustrate, according to the McKinsey Global Institute report, a 1% improvement in productivity could save the industry billions annually.
Read More Read More Key strategies to achieve zero defects in construction
How to Measure Construction Productivity
Measuring construction productivity can be straightforward if you know the right methods. Here are some common ways to do it:
- Output per labor hour: This measures the amount of work completed per hour of labor. For example, if a team lays 500 bricks in 8 hours, the productivity is 62.5 bricks per hour.
- Cost-based productivity: This method assesses the output against the cost of resources used. For example, if a project costs $50,000 and produces 10 units, the cost per unit is $5,000.
- Time-based productivity: This looks at the amount of time taken to complete a project or task. For instance, completing a building in 6 months compared to an expected 8 months indicates higher productivity.
And these is a step-by-step process for measuring:
- Define the output: Identify what constitutes the output (e.g., square meters of concrete poured).
- Record input data: Track the resources used, such as labor hours, materials, and equipment.
- Calculate productivity: Use the relevant formula, such as output divided by labor hours.
- Analyze results: Compare the productivity rates against benchmarks or previous projects to identify areas for improvement.
Keep in mind that measuring shouldn’t be isolated from other processes. You might ask yourself, how often do you review your project’s productivity? Are there specific areas where your team struggles to maintain efficiency? What new strategies or tools, for example, daily report software, could you implement to improve results?
Key Factors Affecting Construction Productivity
Numerous aspects influence construction site productivity. Professional associations (for example, the Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA)) release manuals or lists of factors impacting the industry, where main reasons behind worker performance are provided.
Such factors may differ depending on the country, association and even project type but typically they fall into the following categories:
- People’s skills (education, experience, leadership, discipline, communication, legacy data from previous projects)
- Job satisfaction (motivation, salary, perks, contract changes, conflicts, recognition, promotion)
- Working conditions (noise, shift duration, security check, weather, hazardous work area, construction risks)
- Project characteristics (job size, complexity, location, materials, requirements)
- Client requirements (changes in project scope, client communication, approval processes)
- Project organization (site accessibility, logistics, supply chain, security check, commute)
- Safety measures (compliance with safety regulations, safety training, PPE availability)
- Equipment (equipment condition and maintenance, tool shortage, quality of materials, new technology)
- External factors (governmental policies, contractor change, economical cycle, stop-starts during holidays, shortage of resources, seasonal changes)
- Community impact (local community relations, noise ordinances, working hour restrictions
- Technology adoption (use of advanced software, automation, BIM, drones)
Understanding these factors is the first step towards enhanced construction productivity. The next one is proper strategy and execution.
How to Improve Construction Productivity
Given such a diversity of the factors impacting productivity, there is no single solution that will change the situation all at once.
However, there are practical ways to improve construction efficiency that will free you to focus on core tasks, achieving exactly what you aim for.
1. Take Care of Project Planning
This includes detailed project schedules, resource allocation, and risk management. It wouldn’t be breaking news that projects that are started without comprehensive planning are more likely to encounter delays, cost overruns, and resource shortages.
So during the pre-start stage, make sure you give these things proper consideration:
- Timeline creation
- Milestones and deadlines
- Resource allocation (labor, equipment)
- Risk management
2. Adopt Technology
In addition to maintaining high-quality equipment and tools, make sure your field crews can take advantage of professional construction field productivity software that helps manage projects better.
It can be used as a platform for field data collection, workflow automation, drawing review, accounting, bidding, time tracking, safety management, planning, equipment management, and more.
Important, make sure people can use them remotely using mobile devices, and can perform basic actions, for example checklists filling, in the offline mode. Many jobsites have an unstable internet access, so being able to fill in the form when the connection is suddenly lost is important for productivity.
3. Optimize Workforce Management
Optimizing workforce management is key to construction productivity improvement, and it includes many aspects. Since construction projects have a cyclical nature, when the project is in progress, people may need to work shifts without days off or holidays. When there’s a delay or gap between several projects, people expect a cutback in work hours and eventually in payments.
When such cutbacks happen on a regular basis, the employee turnover is high. And retaining a skilled workforce, especially managers and supervisors, is what ensures performance in the first place.
To keep employees loyal to your company, establish a site bonus system that will serve as a back up during project delays. Educate people on what financial incentives they get through all cycles of the project.
And when everything goes perfect, and your crew meets a goal, offer extra rewards like a free meal at a local restaurant or tickets to a game or cinema, to make people feel appreciated and eager to do more quality work.
4. Establish Clear Communication
Knowing how to collaborate in the construction industry is a great skill for any supervisor. Project owners should also be able to communicate progress to managers, and managers need to design clear guidelines to contractors and field crews.
With properly designed construction workflows, every stakeholder knows what tasks they are responsible for, and managers have complete project visibility and accountability even when in-person meetings aren’t available.
Any issue happening on the site (safety accident, insufficient materials, low-quality components, change to a planned production) is reported in real time through quality inspections, safety reports, checklists, etc. This way, problems can be addressed soon after detection, minimizing delays and avoiding rework.
5. Provide Proper Training
Raise awareness of the career opportunities available within the organization, and make training available and easily accessible.
Use tools like Fluix for construction process automation, making the training process comfortable for both organizations and participants, replacing paper with digital reports, automating scoring, and simplifying training manuals sharing.
And when a person steps into a new position, use onboarding checklists to introduce new hires to the company, explain their responsibilities, show the site around and facilitate getting started on a new position. When people see that the company wants to assist their work and even non-work issues, they’re more motivated to push forward.
6. Schedule Access to Limited Equipment
Construction projects typically involve several teams of differently skilled workers to work at the same time. When doing so, they may need simultaneous access to the same tools or can work at the same premise.
To avoid mess and frustration in the workforce, plan your production and create schedules for different teams. If needed, prepare an extra set of tools, which you know will be required by most crews.
7. Mitigate Weather-Related Risks
Weather is uncontrollable, and can cause you trouble, especially when you plan your project months in advance. But it can be mitigated with proper planning and contract clauses.
By understanding contractual obligations and including clauses that provide relief during extreme weather, you can proactively address potential weather-related risks.
By leveraging technology like weather apps you receive real-time weather information. When adverse weather conditions are anticipated, reschedule work, adjust tasks, or even temporarily suspend activities. This way you’ll ensure construction workers’ safety and minimize labor downtime.
8. Set Realistic Goals and Offer Recognition
Unrealistic project deadlines can lead to stress, mistakes, and reduced morale among your people, impacting overall productivity in a bad way. To ensure realistic timelines, evaluate available resources, such as workforce size, expertise, and material availability. Regularly review and adjust project schedules based on resource assessments.
And create a positive work environment and increase job satisfaction, show people you see their effort. And recognized employees tend to be more efficient and committed, leading to higher work quality and lower turnover rates.
Think of specific and meaningful ways to emphasize and honor individual or team achievements. Incentive programs like bonuses or promotions are always a good way to start.
9. Have a Plan B
You can’t change external factors like weather but can mitigate their influence with proper planning. Site accessibility in heavy weather, rain, humidity, heat, noise, equipment resistance – you need to research each aspect that may cause delays, analyze risks and come up with a Plan B and C.
Make a list of processes crucial to project performance (resources, logistics, supply chain, procurement, quality control, finances etc.) and plan how you can fix disruptions in each if needed.
Use construction software to design integrated workflows so that all the parties (managers, contractors, engineers, electricians, builders, owners) stay updated on the project progress or its absence.
Last Word
Productivity can be difficult to measure and forecast, but options for its improvement are multiple.
Identification of factors affecting productivity is the first step. The second is to design a strategy and implement it step by step at the company level and each stage of the construction project.
And Fluix can help you with improving productivity and managing your projects better. You can automate daily reporting and track project progress in real-time, ensuring that you stay on schedule and within budget.
Fluix also streamlines document management, making it easy to access and share project plans, permits, and blueprints. Additionally, the platform’s mobile capabilities allow your team to work efficiently from any location, even offline.
