Determining the Relationship between Direct Work and Construction Labor Productivity in North America: Four Decades of Insights
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 146, Issue 9
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.
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Data Availability Statement
Data generated or analyzed during the study are available from the corresponding author by reasonable request. Information about the journal’s data-sharing policy can be found here: https://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0001263.
Acknowledgments
This research is part of the REVALUE research project that focuses on the refurbishment of social housing buildings. The study was sponsored by the Innovation Fund Denmark. The authors are responsible for the content of this publication.
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Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 146 • Issue 9 • September 2020
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Received: Nov 18, 2019
Accepted: Mar 13, 2020
Published online: Jun 29, 2020
Published in print: Sep 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Nov 29, 2020
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