Road Construction Labor Performance Control Using PPC, PCR and RNC During the Pandemic

Abstract

At the beginning of 2020, the Coronavirus pandemic had various countries negatively affected in the development of their economic activities, as their industries had to interrupt production, hindering their performance and economic development. Before this occurrence, it was known that the evolution of construction labor performance on site was minimum and had high indicators of variability. Due to this, extensive literature reviews have presented Last Planner® System as a methodology to mitigate and improve performance, mostly, in building construction. However, this deficiency presents itself with more frequency in road projects and worsens because of the pandemic.Having this said, it is important to control labor performance during the sanitary crisis in road projects. Therefore, in this context, the objective of this investigation is to validate the use of Last Planner® System methodology indicators (Percentage of Plan Completed and Percentage of Constraint Removal) as mechanisms of labor control.The findings evidence a direct relationship between improving indicators of Last Planner® System and a better labor performance while meeting budgeted yields.This in turn has validated the use of Last Planner indicators. Regarding the Reasons for non Completion, the impact of external factors merits and additional investigation due to frequency of occurrence.

Application of the Lean Construction methodology in an urban paving work

“…Therefore, it was necessary to take action to counteract this situation; consequently, by applying the planning with the projections raised in the Look Ahead, it was possible to reverse the delay in the execution of the project because, thanks to the weekly planning, it was obtained the completed works shown in percentages, that is to say, both the percentage of completed jobs and the percentage of jobs on hold were obtained, showing each week that the minimum percentage of completed activities was 70%, which results in improved productivity and performance, as stated by [13]. The percentage of work waiting for the weeks elapsed decreased, which coincides with the results of [14].…”

“…Regarding the fulfillment of activities by applying the Last Planner System, it states that by analyzing the percentage of plan fulfillment (PPC), the following is related. When productivity is lower, yields increase because resources are poorly used, so this case can be reversed by adequately planning and optimizing resources to increase productivity and obtain positive yields [13]. Issa [14], in his study PET (percentage of waiting jobs) and PTNT (percentage of unfinished jobs), indicates that these percentages tend to increase when there is no control, i.e., when there are no measurements and planning, these percentages become high, but with the proper implementation of the methodology, they decrease by considerable values [14].…”