Borg, L and Song, H S (2015) Quality change and implications for productivity development: Housing construction in Sweden 1990-2010. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 141(1): 05014014, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Current procedures for computing building price indices do not adequately account for changes in the quality of new residential construction. This has resulted in an upward bias when it comes to price changes, which causes published productivity changes to be too low because of overdeflation. The aim of this study is to estimate productivity figures that take quality changes into account. Knowledge about the size of quality changes is important to quantify the true level of cost increases in the residential construction sector to obtain more reliable productivity development figures. This paper shows that productivity in the residential construction sector has been underestimated since the 1990s. The findings indicate that data collection for productivity calculations should be more detailed and rigorous to measure quality changes. The paper highlights potential improvements in the calculations of productivity changes.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction; dwellings; productivity; quality |
| Index terms: | computing, cost increase, bias, estimate, residential construction, Sweden, productivity |
| Subjects: | computing systems, financial and cost management, probability and distributions, Geography, economics, construction integration, management |
| Topics: | Digital Applications, Cost Management, Business Strategy, Geographical Context, Research Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here