Neve, H H; Wandahl, S; Lindhard, S; Teizer, J and Lerche, J (2020) Determining the relationship between direct work and construction labor productivity in North America: Four decades of insights. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 146(9): 04020110, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Labor productivity in construction has fallen behind other industries in most of the world and has declined continuously for decades in the United States. To change this, the construction industry needs to know where to focus. This research aims to show how important craftsmen efficiency is for national construction labor productivity (CLP) development. Statistical analysis was used to compare craftsmen efficiency and CLP data from North America (NA) in the period 1972-2010. Craftsmen efficiency data were extracted from published work that measured direct work (DW) through work sampling, and CLP data were extracted from national databases. A statistically significant relationship between DW and CLP was established. This revealed that adding 36 s of DW to every work hour could yield a yearly return of 5.4 billion USD to the NA gross domestic product (GDP). Results show that more focus on activity and project level efficiency is crucial for changing the trends of national CLP. Industry leaders and policy makers now have a solid foundation for taking corrective actions for an industry plagued by low productivity.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction labor productivity; direct work; effectiveness; efficiency; work sampling |
| Index terms: | construction industry, craft worker, labour productivity, effectiveness, sampling, construction labour, statistical analysis, database, productivity, gross domestic product, efficiency, United States |
| Subjects: | Geography, performance management, management, industry analysis, data management, practitioner, data collection methods, economic analysis, data science |
| Topics: | Geographical Context, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Roles and Professions, Quality Management, Digital Applications, Site Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
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