Construction companies pay the price downstream in time and cost overruns unless they pay attention to productivity in the planning stages
The construction industry has seen an overall decline in productivity in the last number of years,” says Mark Taylor, a senior construction manager at PCL. “We know this because of a declining work output per man.” PCL and other companies have, in recent years, been besieged by escalating material costs, a demand for labour and the accompanying high wages. To a certain extent, this situation has eased with the recession. The workforce has thinned, “But while upcoming demand has dropped,” Taylor says, “the industry is still busy with current projects.”
The 20-year decline in productivity, and the obstacles that productivity faces, are attributable to a number of factors. One is a legacy from the last recession in the 1980s. “We lost a large part of our knowledge base,” says Taylor of the industry. “We never adequately recovered and, as a result, the industry-wide skill level is lower.” When the upswing started, there were fewer senior workers to train and mentor their juniors – and productivity increases with experience. Another factor is increased pressure to be faster and meet shorter schedules.
But perhaps the biggest block on the path to construction productivity doesn’t happen on site at all. “Maybe 10 per cent of productivity issues are on the labour side,” says Bob Tague, a consultant for Hatch, a process and business consulting firm. Tague has 40 years of experience, much of it auditing large construction projects. “Productivity problems,” he says, “happen at the engineering level.” It’s the old story of an ounce of prevention versus a pound of cure.
“Imagine you had a huge job with 10,000 people working on it. They work in pairs and have different tasks in the morning and afternoon,” Tagues hypothesizes. “Each pair performs 10,000 discrete bits of work in a day. In a 10-day shift, that’s 100,000 activities.” It’s a lot to account for. “They’ll need tools and materials and they need to be in place,” Tague continues. “Who gets the tools? Who gets the equipment? Who organizes the worksite?”
Lack of upstream planning has a domino effect downstream that gets in the way of labour performing those 10,000 tasks. “Workface planning is the number one issue in productivity,” Tague says. Management, he says, needs to undertake contingency plans covering off the “what ifs” of a project, having a Plan B that considers everything, from weather to civil unrest. At PCL, Taylor agrees on the importance of planning.
“We don’t start a project,” he says, “until we’ve already built it once on paper.”
The first step to planning better construction productivity is to measure it, or at least account for factors affecting it. That’s what Dr. Janaka Ruwanpura, director of the project management specialization at the University of Calgary Schulich School of Engineering and researchers set out to do. The team observed workers on construction sites around Calgary over several weeks, recording the amount of time the workers took to perform tasks. The team hoped to identify hard and soft factors that impact construction. A hard factor is, for example, tool placement or accessibility of material. A soft factor could include a worker’s level of motivation. Ruwanpura’s team analyzed their findings and implemented site changes to combat the barriers to productivity that they found.
Workers spent, on average, a little more than 50 per cent of their day on tool time – tasks actually related to construction. The rest of the time they looked for tools and materials, socialized, took instructions and moved between tasks. “From the research,” Ruwanpura says, “we identified the top 10 targets for improving construction productivity.” And in response to the targets, the team devised and implemented a toolbox of solutions that constructors in Canada can use.
Ruwanpura found that a primary obstacle to productivity on site was poor communication between management and workers, despite morning meetings. It’s a sentiment echoed by Mark Taylor at PCL. “Communication is important to motivating a workforce,” he says. “If workers know what they’re doing, they can take pride in it.” Taylor recounts a story from a non-PCL site. “A worker three months on the job had no idea what he was building.” Ruwanpura’s studies demonstrate that informed workers have nearly 50% less idle time on the jobsite.
To aid this, Ruwanpura’s team developed a computer kiosk that held jobsite information including daily and weekly productivity targets. It also showed workers’ assignments and provided technical information that could help them execute those tasks, along with long-term targets and three-dimensional models of the finished project. Tool time went up as much as 13 per cent. Ruwanpura’s kiosk is expensive, but can pay for itself in three weeks of productivity gains. His toolbox contains other items that managers can implement on site. And Ruwanpura offers courses and webinars to interested parties.
Key Strategies
U of C professor Dr. Janaka Ruwanpura has identified five key strategies which can enhance worker productivity on construction sites. Using some or all of these strategies has been proven to increase tool time and reduce costs.
An Information Booth An onsite computer terminal equipped with such important information as daily and weekly productivity targets, assignments for each worker, special technical information for each worker, updated safety instructions, long-term jobsite targets, and three-dimensional models of the assigned construction work and finished products.
A Productivity Improvement Officer A supervisory role with responsibility to assess and refine all jobsite practices to ensure each is being conducted as efficiently as possible.
Better Communication Among Subtrades Enhanced co-ordination and communication reduces conflicts and builds efficiencies on the worksite.
Efficient Material Management Improper or inefficient handling and storage of materials create delays and reduce productivity. Dr. Ruwanpura recommends using software tools to assist with inventory and purchasing management.
Supervisor/Worker Pairings Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of both foremen and tradespeople allows better alignment within work teams.
Top 10 Ways To Improve Construction Productivity
- Ensure a highly motivated and satisfied workforce
- Develop best practices for supervisors
- Foster a better working relationship between subcontractors and main contractors
- Manage tools, materials and equipment more efficiently
- Adopt best work practices to optimize tool time
- Optimize work practices and workface planning
- Create an IT solution for better onsite communication
- Integrate site and office management better
- Develop contingencies for weather issues
- Account for project stakeholder issues such as changes stemming from owner, architect
