Construction Industry

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Recommended: Factors affecting productivity in the construction industry

The literature review is aimed at covering the study of the research related to labor productivity calculations performed to evaluate the performance of the United States construction industry and the development of formulae used to perform the labor productivity calculations.

Attempts at the quantification of labor productivity of the construction industry

Considering the magnitude of construction industry, any research is not only critical in improving the nation’s economy but it will also assist in improving the productivity of construction work force (Chapman and Butry, 2008). But studies related to the accurate measurement of the productivity of the construction industry has been limited (BFC, 2006). Many researchers have made efforts in identifying the factors, which drive the construction labor productivity, and in developing robust methods for its measurement. According to one of the first studies conducted in terms of analyzing labor productivity of the construction industry, from 1968 to 1978 the productivity of the construction industry has experienced a decline because of delayed growth in capital per worker (Stokes, 1981). Another study supported this finding that construction industry has declined from 1968 to 1978 and regarded the shift in the output between commercial projects to residential projects as the contributing factor (Allen, 1985). Another attempt at measuring labor productivity found that the productivity has increased from 1980 to 1990 due to depressed real wages and technological advances (Allmon et al. 2000). In 2004, a study suggested that although construction industry has significantly adopted the technological advances, the productivity of the industry experienced a downfall from 1964 to 1999 ...

... middle of paper ...

...t the sub-sector level rather than at the industry level since the aggregation of data at the overall industry level may camouflage productivity trends at the individual sub-sectors (Rojas and Aramvareekul, 2003)

Relevance to the study:

Like the previous study, this research also had a broader approach in calculating the labor productivity. This study attempted to estimate the labor productivity of the entire industry by taking weighted average of the grouped sectors. Consequently, it was recommended that the measurement of labor productivity be examined at the sub-sector level rather than at the industry level since the aggregation of data at the overall industry level may camouflage productivity trends at the individual sub-sectors (Rojas and Aramvareekul, 2003).

Table 1 shows the comparison of the two previous studies and the development of the proposal.

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