An HP survey of construction workers in the US, UK and Germany has found little progress in addressing reportedly sluggish levels of productivity.
Conducted by Censuswide, the first HP ‘State of Construction Productivity’ survey followed a McKinsey report highlighting labor productivity increases in manufacturing of 3.6 perc ent a year over the past two decades against 1 per cent for construction during the same period.
The HP survey of construction workers and decision makers found that 60% of respondents agreed techniques and processes have changed little in the last 20-30 years.
There is a clear acceptance within the industry that a problem exists, with less than 1% of workers believing the sector has no issue with productivity
A greater focus on harnessing tech and automating certain tasks is surely key to helping construction meaningfully improve productivity levels.”
Tech remains under utilized
Respondents agreed that technology has an integral role to play, with 71% seeing it as being able to solve the productivity puzzle.
Remarkably, though, new innovations are not being prioritised - perhaps explaining the industry’s lack of progress:
Respondents believe raising productivity levels can help the industry overcome various key issues, including:
Unproductive layout techniques a liability for firms
On average, impacted construction employees saw delays of over 15 days caused by layout (or setting-out) errors, with some (5%) enduring interruptions as long as three months.
The cost of these reworks amount to 9.4% of the total project budget on average and a fraction under a fifth (19%) of the project’s profit margin.
Mistakes aren’t the only issue facing layout teams.
Almost 9 in 10 (88%) of those surveyed have had challenges staffing layout tasks – a combination of both a lack of skills and a shortage of labor.
HP points to the growing popularity in the DACH region of its SitePrint autonomous robotic solution which is designed to accurately print complex construction site layouts as evidence of technology facilitating common processes. Following its roll out in North America and the UK&I, and then Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the printing solution has been deployed on high profile projects including Skanska's re-development of Penn Station in New York.
The results suggest that technology is seen as the answer, with 67% saying layout methods should have evolved further (as high as 74% in Germany), and 66% wanting layout tasks automated (rising to 78% amongst US respondents).
HP points to the growing popularity in the DACH region of its SitePrint autonomous robotic solution which is designed to accurately print complex construction site layouts as evidence of technology facilitating common processes.
Following its roll out in North America and the UK&I, and then Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the printing solution has been deployed on high profile projects including Skanska’s re-development of Penn Station in New York.
Daniel Martinez, General Manager, HP Large Format Printing, says: “As the results of HP’s State of Construction Productivity survey show, the sector is crying out for technological innovation.”
The online survey involved a sample of 903 respondents, aged 18+, across the UK, USA and Germany – consisting of CEOs, CIOs, site managers, contracts managers, construction foremen, superintendents, and leadmen, construction dryliners, surveyors and fixers, setting-out/layout engineers and surveyors, BIM managers, as well as field operation managers and field engineers.
The data was collected from 11th to 14th September 2023.
... [T]he sector is crying out for technological innovation.
