The divergence in aggregate and activity estimates of US construction productivity

Abstract

Discrepancies exist between aggregate and activity productivity measurements in the US construction industry. Multiple studies using aggregate industry measures suggest that construction productivity has declined over the long term. A longstanding problem with the aggregate measures concerns the difficulty of controlling for inflation so as to accurately measure real output. As an alternative, average activity productivity, measured by individual work activities, indicates that construction productivity has increased over the same time period. Activity measurement data have been collected for 200 construction activities over a 22-year time period from commercial estimation manuals used by contractors and owners to estimate the cost and time requirements for construction. This paper examines the discrepancies between aggregate and activity measurements and suggests possible reasons for their existence.Labour, Productivity, Trends, Construction Industry,

Assessing the impact of materials tracking technologies on construction craft productivity

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“…However, it has been recently observed that isolated construction activities that have been taking advantage of new materials and equipment technology have highly increased their productivity rates over time. In particular, recent research studies have determined a widespread improvement in construction performance across multiple construction divisions ranging from 0.2% to 2.8% per year between 1976 and 1998 using microeconomic data from 200 construction activities [6].…”

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Effectiveness of communication of spatial engineering information through 3D CAD and 3D printed models

“…Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Bureau of Economic Analysis 2013;and Huesman et al 2013), it lags the rest of the economy in terms of productivity measurement and improvement (Goodrum et al 2002). Due to changes in real output and differences in accounting procedures, there is no isolated industry level measure of labor productivity (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2012), although recently the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has developed an aggregate multifactor productivity measure for the combined agricultural, mining, and construction industries (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2013).…”