Development and Comparative Analysis of Construction Industry Labor Productivity Metrics

Construction industry labor productivity is an important metric that provides feedback about industry level trends and improvements. However, labor productivity for the construction industry has historically been elusive to define and determine both qualitatively and quantitatively. Existing research studies have provided different methods to calculate productivity at a variety of levels (activity, project, industry), but none proved universally satisfying. This paper presents a new metric for quantifying productivity that was developed using RSMeans Building Construction Cost Data, which is a source that is reliable, repeatable, and developed from consistent and accurate data sources. The metric was developed using labor and cost information from a sample of typical construction activities. The study results showed a slightly sporadic, but consistent productivity decline in both output per labor hour and per dollar cost from 1990 through 2008. Other metrics were selected from existing research studies and sources for a comparative analysis against the new metric, which revealed varying trends across metrics on the basis of varying input data and sources. The paper presents the new metric, which has value in that it allows construction professionals to analyze industry level productivity by means of a generally used and consistently published reference manual.