The Construction Industry’s Productivity Slump – and How Tech Helps
Does your construction team work harder than ever before — without seeing the payoff? Many analysts believe the construction industry is in a decades-long productivity slump. This doesn’t mean that buildings and roads aren’t being built or that money isn’t being made, but that construction companies and construction workers have to work longer, more grueling hours to produce at the same level.
What’s to blame? The research points to individual job complexity and poor or inefficient communication on the construction site as culprits. And with many project managers and general contractors still relying on paper as the main method of record keeping and invoicing, real-time collaboration between the worksite, the office, and the client is impossible.
Some in the construction industry are turning to mobile technologies to work more efficiently and boost productivity on the construction site. How are they doing it? And just how bad is the decline in productivity? Here’s what the latest research and numbers reveal.
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The construction industry’s productivity slump – and how technology can help.
Productivity in construction declined 32% a year over the past 3 decades. In all other non-farm industries, productivity grew by 3.06%. In 2013, the average construction worker produced $15,000 less in product per year than in 1993. Yet construction crews log about 20% more hours.
So why the decline?
Complexity
35% of construction work involves retrofits, maintenance, or remodeling, which is more difficult than new construction. The work is complex and time-consuming. A single project brings between 200 – 500 requests for info between stakeholders.
Waste
- $6.9 Billion = The cost of inefficient processes among operations and maintenance staff in construction.
- $1.7 Billion = The amount of money GCs waste every year due to outdated communications like paper forms.
- $3.5 Million = what large construction companies waste searching for information or recreating documents they couldn’t find.
- 50% of a worker’s time, while punched in, is devoted to wasteful activity caused by factors like poor communication, inadequate management, and overstaffing.
Process
- Up to 78% of construction companies use cloud solutions for some portion of their operations.
- 65% of construction professionals name “rework” (or repetitive processes) as the NO. 1 business process to fix.
- 47.9% of construction companies believe that mobile capabilities are very important when selecting any solutions purchased.
The Solution
An average construction company could increase productivity by 45% by improving systems integration or moving to digital records. Eliminating paper could boost efficiency among office staff by 29.7%.