Productivity matters

Concerns have been expressed that construction management research has rarely led to dired improvements in the construction industry practice. this may be both a cause and an effect of the relatively low contribution of the construction sector to 'research and development' in comparison with other industry sectors. Current concerns of construction organisations that may benefit from research - and therefore should attract the attention of both practitioners and researchers - include the intensified search for enhanced productivities. This paper summaries a series of recent investigations into the productivity of concreting related operations on a high rise buildings Hong Kong. Work study and related techniques are applied in deriving and comparing concrete placing rates using different methods (such as pumps, and cranes and skip combinations). The production rates and activity levels offormwork carpenters and steelworkers are also investigated. Comparisons with somewhat similar investigations in other countries, confirm the usefulness of establishing productivity benchmarks using appropriate indicators, while incorporating allowances for key 'hard' variables such as technologies used (and available). The residual differences in productivity levels may be ascribed to 'softer' but perhaps more challenging human and organisational variables, which will therefore be worh investigating further. It is also suggested that addressing such cire operational concerns in the context of the key issue of productivity can arouse the interest of both industry and researchers in the light of foreseeable direct benefits. Partnerships forged to focus on such short term impovements may also hopefully continue into researching and developing suitable longer term strategies.